“I don’t care; I don’t believe George is anything like that, anyhow,” said Nanny.  Her delicate face flushed pink, her lips pouted softly, as if she were going to cry.

“You wait an’ see.  I guess George Eastman ain’t no better than other men.  You hadn’t ought to judge father, though.  He can’t help it, ‘cause he don’t look at things jest the way we do.  An’ we’ve been pretty comfortable here, after all.  The roof don’t leak—­ ain’t never but once—­that’s one thing.  Father’s kept it shingled right up.”

“I do wish we had a parlor.”

“I guess it won’t hurt George Eastman any to come to see you in a nice clean kitchen.  I guess a good many girls don’t have as good a place as this.  Nobody’s ever heard me complain.”

“I ain’t complained either, mother.”

“Well, I don’t think you’d better, a good father an’ a good home as you’ve got.  S’pose your father made you go out an’ work for your livin’?  Lots of girls have to that ain’t no stronger an’ better able to than you be.”

Sarah Penn washed the frying-pan with a conclusive air.  She scrubbed the outside of it as faithfully as the inside.  She was a masterly keeper of her box of a house.  Her one living-room never seemed to have in it any of the dust which the friction of life with inanimate matter produces.  She swept, and there seemed to be no dirt to go before the broom; she cleaned, and one could see no difference.  She was like an artist so perfect that he has apparently no art.  To-day she got out a mixing bowl and a board, and rolled some pies, and there was no more flour upon her than upon her daughter who was doing finer work.  Nanny was to be married in the fall, and she was sewing on some white cambric and embroidery.  She sewed industriously while her mother cooked, her soft milk-white hands and wrists showed whiter than her delicate work.

“We must have the stove moved out in the shed before long,” said Mrs. Penn.  “Talk about not havin’ things, it’s been a real blessin’ to be able to put a stove up in that shed in hot weather.  Father did one good thing when he fixed that stove-pipe out there.”

Sarah Penn’s face as she rolled her pies had that expression of meek vigor which might have characterized one of the New Testament saints.  She was making mince-pies.  Her husband, Adoniram Penn, liked them better than any other kind.  She baked twice a week.  Adoniram often liked a piece of pie between meals.  She hurried this morning.  It had been later than usual when she began, and she wanted to have a pie baked for dinner.  However deep a resentment she might be forced to hold against her husband, she would never fail in sedulous attention to his wants.

Nobility of character manifests itself at loop-holes when it is not provided with large doors.  Sarah Penn’s showed itself to-day in flaky dishes of pastry.  So she made the pies faithfully, while across the table she could see, when she glanced up from her work, the sight that rankled in her patient and steadfast soul—­the digging of the cellar of the new barn in the place where Adoniram forty years ago had promised her their new house should stand.