She stood in the door with Nanny at her elbow and watched him out of sight.  Her eyes had a strange, doubtful expression in them; her peaceful forehead was contracted.  She went in, and about her baking again.  Nanny sat sewing.  Her wedding-day was drawing nearer, and she was getting pale and thin with her steady sewing.  Her mother kept glancing at her.

“Have you got that pain in your side this mornin’?” she asked.

“A little.”

Mrs. Penn’s face, as she worked, changed, her perplexed forehead smoothed, her eyes were steady, her lips firmly set.  She formed a maxim for herself, although incoherently with her unlettered thoughts.  “Unsolicited opportunities are the guide-posts of the Lord to the new roads of life,” she repeated in effect, and she made up her mind to her course of action.

“S’posin’ I had wrote to Hiram,” she muttered once, when she was in the pantry—­“s’posin’ I had wrote, an’ asked him if he knew of any horse?  But I didn’t, an’ father’s goin’ wa’n’t none of my doin’.  It looks like a providence.”  Her voice rang out quite loud at the last.

“What you talkin’ about, mother?” called Nanny.

“Nothin’.”

Mrs. Penn hurried her baking; at eleven o ’clock it was all done.  The load of hay from the west field came slowly down the cart track, and drew up at the new barn.  Mrs. Penn ran out.  “Stop!” she screamed—­“stop!”

The men stopped and looked; Sammy upreared from the top of the load, and stared at his mother.

“Stop!” she cried out again.  “Don’t you put the hay in that barn; put it in the old one.”

“Why, he said to put it in here,” returned one of the haymakers, wonderingly.  He was a young man, a neighbor’s son, whom Adoniram hired by the year to help on the farm.

“Don’t you put the hay in the new barn; there’s room enough in the old one, ain’t there?” said Mrs. Penn.

“Room enough,” returned the hired man, in his thick, rustic tones.  “Didn’t need the new barn, nohow, far as room’s concerned.  Well, I s’pose he changed his mind.”  He took hold of the horses’ bridles.

Mrs. Penn went back to the house.  Soon the kitchen windows were darkened, and a fragrance like warm honey came into the room.

Nanny laid down her work.  “I thought father wanted them to put the hay into the new barn?” she said, wonderingly.

“It’s all right,” replied her mother.

Sammy slid down from the load of hay, and came in to see if dinner was ready.

“I ain’t goin’ to get a regular dinner to-day, as long as father’s gone,” said his mother.  “I’ve let the fire go out.  You can have some bread an’ milk an’ pie.  I thought we could get along.”  She set out some bowls of milk, some bread, and a pie on the kitchen table.  “You’d better eat your dinner now,” said she.  “You might jest as well get through with it.  I want you to help me afterward.”

Nanny and Sammy stared at each other.  There was something strange in their mother’s manner.  Mrs. Penn did not eat anything herself.  She went into the pantry, and they heard her moving dishes while they ate.  Presently she came out with a pile of plates.  She got the clothes-basket out of the shed, and packed them in it.  Nanny and Sammy watched.  She brought out cups and saucers, and put them in with the plates.