how comfortable we live now to what we used to! Stoves is such a
convenience; the fire's so much handier. Housekeepin' don't begin to
be the trial it was once."

"I must say I like old-fashioned cookin' better than oven cookin',"
observed Mrs. Jake. "Seems to me's if the taste of things was all
drawed up chimbly. Be you going to do much for Thanksgivin', Mis'
Thacher? I 'spose not;" and moved by a sudden kind impulse, she added,
"Why can't you and John jine with our folks? 't wouldn't put us out,
and 'twill be lonesome for ye."

"'T won't be no lonesomer than last year was, nor the year before,"
and Mrs. Thacher's face quivered a little as she rose and took one of
the candles, and opened the trap door that covered the cellar stairs.
"Now don't ye go to makin' yourself work," cried the guests. "No,
don't! we ain't needin' nothin'; we was late about supper." But their
hostess stepped carefully down and disappeared for a few minutes,
while the cat hovered anxiously at the edge of the black pit.

"I forgot to ask ye if ye'd have some cider?" a sepulchral voice asked
presently; "but I don't know now's I can get at it. I told John I
shouldn't want any whilst he was away, and so he ain't got the spiggit
in yet," to which Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin both replied that they
were no hands for that drink, unless 't was a drop right from the
press, or a taste o' good hard cider towards the spring of the year;
and Mrs. Thacher soon returned with some slices of cake in a plate and
some apples held in her apron. One of her neighbors took the candle as
she reached up to put it on the floor, and when the trap door was
closed again all three drew up to the table and had a little feast.
The cake was of a kind peculiar to its maker, who prided herself upon