When she rose up, the next development in her campaign was planned.  Not in vain had she listened scornfully to the silly talk of city folks about the picturesqueness of her old house and garden.  It was all grist to her mill, she perceived, and during the next summer it was a grimly amused old miller who watched the antics of Abigail Warner, arrayed in a pseudo-oldfashioned gown of green-flowered muslin, with a quaintly ruffled cap confining her rebellious white hair, talking the most correct book-brand of down-east jargon, and selling flowers at twenty times their value to automobile and carriage folk.  She did not mind sacrificing her personal dignity, but she did blush for her garden, reduced to the most obvious commonplaces of flowers that any child could grow.  But by September she had saved the school-teacher’s pay, and the Martins and the Allens, who had been wavering on account of their children, decided to stay another winter at least.

That was something, Miss Abigail thought, that Christmas, as she and Miss Molly tortured their rheumatic limbs to play games with the six children around the tree.  She had held rigorously to the old tradition of having the Christmas tree party in the Town Hall, and she had heartened Miss Molly through the long lonely hours they had spent in trimming it; but as the tiny handful of forlorn celebrants gathered about the tall tree, glittering in all the tinsel finery which was left over from the days when the big hall had rung to the laughter of a hundred children and as many more young people, even Miss Abigail felt a catch in her throat as she quavered through “King Willyum was King James’s son!”

When the games were over and the children sat about soberly, eating their ice-cream and cake, she looked over her shoulder into the big empty room and shivered.  The children went away and she and Miss Molly put out the lights in silence.  When they came out into the moonlight and looked up and down the deserted street, lined with darkened houses, the face of the younger woman was frankly tear-stained.  “Oh, Miss Abigail,” she said; “let’s give it up!”

Miss Abigail waited an instant, perceptible instant before answering, but, when she did, her voice was full and harsh with its usual vigor.  “Fiddlesticks!  You must ha’ been losing your sleep.  Go tuck yourself up and get a good night’s rest and you won’t talk such kind of talk!”

But she herself sat up late into the night with a pencil and paper, figuring out sums that had impossible answers.

That March she had a slight stroke of paralysis, and was in an agony of apprehension lest she should not recover enough to plant the flowers for the summer’s market.  By May, flatly against the doctor’s orders, she was dragging herself around the garden on crutches, and she stuck to her post, smiling and making prearranged rustic speeches all the summer.  She earned enough to pay the school-teacher another winter and to buy the fuel for the schoolhouse, and again the Martins and the Allens stayed over; though they announced with a callous indifference to Miss Abigail’s ideas that they were going down to Johnsonville at Christmas to visit their relatives there, and have the children go to the tree the ex-Greenfordites always trimmed.