“Enough to make me so.  If you had only taken my advice, we shouldn’t have come to this.”

“I don’t know what advice you refer to, Rachel.”

“No, I don’t expect you do.  You didn’t pay no attention to it.  That’s the reason.”

“But if you’ll repeat it, perhaps we can profit by it yet,” said Mrs. Crump, with imperturbable good humor.

“I told you you ought to be layin’ up something ag’in a rainy day.  But that’s always the way.  Folks think when times is good it’s always a goin’ to be so, but I knew better.”

“I don’t see how we could have been more economical,” said Mrs. Crump, mildly.

“There’s a hundred ways.  Poor folks like us ought not to expect to have meat so often.  It’s frightful to think what the butcher’s bill must have been the last six months.”

Inconsistent Rachel!  Only the day before she had made herself very uncomfortable because there was no meat for dinner, and said she couldn’t live without it.  Mrs. Crump might have reminded her of this, but the good woman was too kind to make the retort.  She contented herself with saying that they must try to do better in future.

“That’s always the way,” muttered Rachel.  “Shut the stable door when the horse is stolen.  Folks never learn from experience till it’s too late to be of any use.  I don’t see what the world was made for, for my part.  Everything goes topsy-turvy, and all sorts of ways except the right way.  I sometimes think ’taint much use livin’.”

“Oh, you’ll feel better by and by, Rachel.  Hark, there’s Jack, isn’t it?”

“Anybody might know by the noise who it is,” pursued Rachel, in the same general tone that had marked her conversation hitherto.  “He always comes stomping along as if he was paid for makin’ a noise.  Anybody ought to have a cast-iron head that lives anywhere in his hearing.”

Her cheerful remarks were here broken in upon by the sudden entrance of Jack, who, in his eagerness, slammed the door behind him, unheeding his mother’s quiet admonition not to make a noise.

“Look there!” said he, displaying a quarter of a dollar.

“How did you get it?” asked his mother.

“Holding horses,” answered Jack.

“Here, take it, mother.  I warrant you’ll find a use for it.”

“It comes in good time,” said Mrs. Crump.  “We’re out of flour, and I had no money to buy any.  Before you take off your boots, Jack, why can’t you run over to the store, and get half a dozen pounds?”

“You see the Lord hasn’t quite forgotten us,” remarked his mother, as Jack started on his errand.

“What’s a quarter of a dollar?” said Rachel, gloomily.  “Will it carry us through the winter?”

“It will carry us through to-night, and perhaps Timothy will have work to-morrow.  Hark, that’s his step.”

CHAPTER II.

The events of an evening.