provoked, for I had no more linen as fine as I wanted."

"Of course the calf ate up my shirts," came in Phoebe's laughing voice
from the doorway where she had been standing unobserved for several
minutes, watching Mrs. Buchanan and Caroline. "Something is always
chewing at my affairs but Mrs. Matilda shoos them away for me sometimes
still--even _calves_ when it is positively necessary. How very
industrious you do look! At times even I sigh for a needle, though I
wouldn't know what to do with it. There seems to be something in a
woman's soul that nothing but a needle satisfies; morbid craving, that!"

"Phoebe, I want to make something for you. I feel I must as soon as these
petticoats for Little Sister are done. What shall it be?" and Caroline
Darrah beamed upon Phoebe with the warmest of inter-woman glances. The
affection for Phoebe which had possessed the heart of Caroline Darrah had
deepened daily and to its demands, Phoebe, for her, had been most
unusually responsive.

"At your present rate of stitching I will have a year or two to decide,
beautiful," she answered as she settled down on the broad window-seat
near them. "David Kildare and I have come to lunch, Mrs. Matilda, and the
major has sent him over for Andrew. I hope he brings him, but I doubt it.
I have told Tempie and she says she is glad to have us," she added as
Mrs. Buchanan turned and looked in the direction of the kitchen regions.
They all smiled, for the understanding that existed between Phoebe and
Tempie was the subject of continual jest.

"Have you seen the babies to-day?" asked Caroline as she drew a long new
thread through the needle. "Isn't it lovely the way people are making
them presents? Mr. Capers says the men at the mills are going to give