Betty bade her a pleasant good-day, "but it's a poor place, anyhow,"
gazing up at the bare rafters, "and as I live here all alone I have to
be precious careful of my few things."

"But it so neat and clean," said Betty, pulling a three-legged stool
toward the fire, and surveying the recently scrubbed floor; "we are cold
and weary, and you are very good to take us in."

Evidently the woman was amenable to politeness, for she bustled around
and insisted upon making the coffee, which Caesar produced in due time
from his hamper under the box-seat, and she laid a cloth on the
pine-wood table, and at last, after disappearing for a few minutes into
the darkness of a small inner room, reappeared with three silver spoons
and two forks in her hand, which she laid carefully down beside the
pewter plates on the table with an air of pride as she remarked,
addressing no one in particular:--

"The forks was my grandmother's, and my father fetched the spoons from a
voyage he made on the Spanish main, and he always said they was made of
real Spanish dollars."

Thereupon Mrs. Seymour and Betty fell to admiring the queer-looking
articles (which from their workmanship were really worthy of
admiration), and the spinster relaxed her severe air sufficiently to
accept a cup of the coffee they were drinking. And then Mrs. Seymour
induced her to give consent that Caesar should have a shake-down in a
corner of the kitchen, and although the bed which Betty and the pretty
matron had to share was hard, it was clean, and the pillows soft, and
they slept soundly and well amid their rough surroundings, and, to
confess the truth, enjoyed the novelty of the situation.