directors'll put in another."

Mrs. Mitchell was amazed, but entirely interested. It was many a long
day since any person, official or private, had met with cordiality from
this quarter.

"I hope you and our friend are going to enjoy your room together," she
essayed, with a hollow cheerfulness.

"I expect to be as gay as a cricket," returned Mrs. Blair, innocently.
"An' I do trust I've got good neighbors. I like to keep to myself, but
if I've got a neighbor, I want her to be somebody you can depend upon."

"I'm sure Miss Dyer means to be very neighborly." The director turned,
with a smile, to include that lady in the conversation. But the local
deafness had engulfed her. She was sitting peacefully by the window,
with the air of one retired within herself, to think her own very
remote thoughts. The visitor mentally improvised a little theory, and
it seemed to fit the occasion. They had quarrelled, she thought, and
each was disturbed at any notice bestowed on the other.

"I have been wondering whether you would both like to go sleighing with
me some afternoon?" she ventured, with the humility so prone to assail
humankind in a frank and shrewish presence. "The roads are in wonderful
condition, and I don't believe you'd take cold. Do you know, I found
Grandmother Eaton's foot-warmers, the other day! I'll bring them
along."

"Law! I'd go anywheres to git out o' here," said Mrs. Blair,
ruthlessly. "I dunno when I've set behind a horse, either. I guess the