There is no more delightful place to step into, than the home of two old people, who are young, and who love you; they have their “hearts at leisure,” can take time to pet you, and are interested in the smallest details of your lives.  Philip’s father and mother belonged to this type; the juices of their natures were not dried up.  They received Ruey with open arms, and followed her about with their eyes, apparently fearing she would vanish as unexpectedly as she had appeared—­“Philip’s wife” caring enough about them to come so far to see them in the middle of winter, all alone, too—­not many daughters-in-law like that.  They hung upon her words, and brought out the choicest of everything and urged it upon her.  At bed-time mother Thorne came up to “tuck her up,” “just as I did Philip twenty years ago,” she said; then the sweet old face bent over Ruey’s for a moment and left a goodnight kiss, and “The Lord bless and keep you, dear child.”  Ruey’s heart went out to her, and from that hour Philip’s mother was her mother.

Breakfast was all ready the next morning when she came down, and she sat in Philip’s old seat, and the sun looked in at the east window, and a stray ray fell upon her, and burnished the gold of her hair, so that she looked more like an angel than ever to those dear old eyes.  How happy they were—­Philip’s other self in that vacant chair.  Moreover, she ate those famous cakes.  It was all true, they were brown; they were thin and delicate, and light and sweet, and tender, the most delicious morsels, with the amber maple syrup, that she had ever tasted.  She must confess it to herself, they were better than her mother’s; city people could not concoct such amazing cakes as these; then the fragrant golden butter, how she wished poor Philip were there to get some of all these good things.

She had not proposed that her mother-in-law should know that there was anything in the universe that she was ignorant of in the housekeeping line, but now she resolved to lay down all her pride and learn whatever she could, so she followed mother Thorne as she trotted in and out from pantry to kitchen, initiating herself into the mysteries of this and that dish, and storing up many a lesson of housewifely skill.  It all came out after a little; the struggle she had been through with those “horrible cakes.”  Father Thorne laughed until the tears came, to hear his pretty daughter-in-law naively narrate her many grievous failures in that line, enlarging not a little on Philip’s wry faces, when he tried to eat her cakes to save her feelings.  She had confessed it all, now she felt free to watch the process of “setting the cakes” and to ask all the questions she pleased.

“What made mine so horribly bitter once?” she asked.

“Why, you put too much yeast in, I suppose.”

“I only put in a teacupful,” said Ruey.

Then mother Thorne shook her sides with laughter, as she said: 

“Why, child, that ought to make cakes enough for two dozen people; you only need about two table-spoonfuls for the quantity you would make.”