"I shouldn't think they were!" said Mrs. Wadleigh, scornfully, testing
the heat with a hand on her skirt, and then lifting the breadths back
over her quilted petticoat. "I thought that would be the way on't, but
I'd made up my mind to come, an' come I would. Cyrus, what's the matter
o' you? Nothin' more'n a cold, is it?"

Cyrus had withdrawn from the stove, and was feeling his chin,
uncertainly.

"Oh, no, I guess not," he said. "We've been kind o' peaked, for a week
or two, all over the neighborhood; but I guess we shall come out on't,
now we've got into the spring. Mirandy, you git me a mite o' hot water,
an' I'll see if I can't shave."

Mirandy was vigorously washing potatoes at the sink, but she turned, in
ever-ready remonstrance.

"Shave!" she ejaculated, "Well, I guess you won't shave, such a day as
this, in that cold bedroom, with a stockin'-leg round your throat, an'
all! You want to git your death? Why, 'twas only last night, Marthy, he
had a hemlock sweat, an' all the ginger tea I could git down into him!
An' then I didn't know--"

"Law! let him alone!" said Marthy, with a comfortable, throaty laugh.
"He'll feel twice as well, git some o' them things off his neck. Here,
Cyrus, you reach me down your mug--ain't them your shavin' things up
there?--an' I'll fill it for you. You git him a piece o' flannel,
Mirandy, to put on when he's washed up an' took all that stuff off his
throat. Why, he's got enough wool round there, if 'twas all in yarn, to