At this moment the outer door opened, and Timothy Crump entered, not with the quick elastic step of one who brings good tidings, but slowly and deliberately, with a quiet gravity of demeanor, in which his wife could read only too well that he had failed in his efforts to procure work.

His wife, reading all these things in his manner, had the delicacy to forbear intruding upon him questions to which she saw that he could give no satisfactory answers.

Not so Aunt Rachel.

“I needn’t ask,” she began, “whether you got work, Timothy.  I knew beforehand you wouldn’t.  There ain’t no use in tryin’.  The times is awful dull, and, mark my words, they’ll be wuss before they’re better.  We mayn’t live to see ’em.  I don’t expect we shall.  Folks can’t live without money, and when that’s gone we shall have to starve.”

“Not so bad as that, Rachel,” said the cooper, trying to look cheerful; “don’t talk about starving till the time comes.  Anyhow,” glancing at the table on which was spread a good plain meal, “we needn’t talk about starving till to-morrow, with that before us.  Where’s Jack?”

“Gone after some flour,” replied his wife.

“On credit?” asked the cooper.

“No, he’s got the money to pay for a few pounds,” said Mrs. Crump, smiling, with an air of mystery.

“Where did it come from?” asked Timothy, who was puzzled, as his wife anticipated.  “I didn’t know you had any money in the house.”

“No more we had, but he earned it himself, holding horses, this afternoon.”

“Come, that’s good,” said the cooper, cheerfully, “We ain’t so bad off as we might be, you see, Rachel.”

The latter shook her head with the air of a martyr.

At this moment Jack returned, and the family sat down to supper.

“You haven’t told us,” said Mrs. Crump, seeing her husband’s cheerfulness in a measure restored, “what Mr. Blodgett said about the chances for employment.”

“Not much that was encouraging,” answered Timothy.  “He isn’t at all sure how soon it will be best to commence work; perhaps not before spring.”

“Didn’t I tell you so?” commented Rachel, with sepulchral sadness.

Even Mr. Crump could not help looking sober.

“I suppose, Timothy, you haven’t formed any plans,” she said.

“No, I haven’t had time.  I must try to get something else to do.”

“What, for instance?”

“Anything by which I can earn a little, I don’t care if it’s only sawing wood.  We shall have to get along as economically as we can; cut our coat according to our cloth.”

“Oh, you’ll be able to earn something, and we can live very plain,” said Mrs. Crump, affecting a cheerfulness greater than she felt.

“Pity you hadn’t done it sooner,” was the comforting suggestion of Rachel.

“Mustn’t cry over spilt milk,” said the cooper, good-humoredly.  “Perhaps we might have lived a leetle more economically, but I don’t think we’ve been extravagant.”