"Oh, I put in a few jars of jelly and a cake of honey."

After a moment Harriet looked up from her work.

"Do you know the greatest sorrow of the Scotch preacher and his wife?"

"What is it?" I asked.

"They have no chick nor child of their own," said Harriet.

It is prodigious, the amount of work required to make a good
axe-helve--I mean to make it according to one's standard. I had times of
humorous discouragement and times of high elation when it seemed to me I
could not work fast enough. Weeks passed when I did not touch the helve
but left it standing quietly in the corner. Once or twice I took it out
and walked about with it as a sort of cane, much to the secret
amusement, I think, of Harriet. At times Harriet takes a really wicked
delight in her superiority.

Early one morning in March the dawn came with a roaring wind, sleety
snow drove down over the hill, the house creaked and complained in every
clapboard. A blind of one of the upper windows, wrenched loose from its
fastenings, was driven shut with such force that it broke a window pane.
When I rushed up to discover the meaning of the clatter and to repair
the damage, I found the floor covered with peculiar long fragments of
glass--the pane having been broken inward from the centre.

"Just what I have wanted," I said to myself.