door-step, and the path down over the banks to the road was bordered
with smaller shells. The house was white, and the front door was dark
green, with an old-fashioned knocker in the centre.

There were four front windows, and the roof sloped down to them; two
were in Amanda's parlor, and two were in Mrs. Field's. She rented
half of her house to Mrs. Jane Field.

There was a head at each of Amanda's front windows. One was hers, the
other was Mrs. Babcock's. Amanda's old blond face, with its folds of
yellow-gray hair over the ears and sections of the softly-wrinkled,
pinky cheeks, was bent over some needle-work. So was Mrs. Babcock's,
darkly dim with age, as if the hearth-fires of her life had always
smoked, with a loose flabbiness about the jaw-bones, which seemed to
make more evident the firm structure underneath.

Amanda was sewing a braided rug; her little veiny hands jerked the
stout thread through with a nervous energy that was out of accord
with her calm expression and the droop of her long slender body.

"It's pretty hard sewin' braided mats, ain't it?" said Mrs. Babcock.

"I don't care how hard 'tis if I can get 'em sewed strong," replied
Amanda, and her voice was unexpectedly quick and decided. "I never
had any feelin' that anything was hard, if I could only do it."

"Well, you ain't had so much hard work to do as some folks. Settin'
in a rockin'-chair sewin' braided mats ain't like doin' the housework
for a whole family. If you'd had the cookin' to do for four
men-folks, the way I have, you'd felt it was pretty hard work, even