Mistress Madcap

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Mistress Madcap

By Edith Bishop Sherman

Two Little Colonial Maids at Home

THERE be no use talking o' holidays this year!" said Mehitable rather bitterly, the swift—a wooden apparatus for winding yarn, fastened to the edge of the table with a thumbscrew—turning rapidly as she spoke. For this was the time of the Revolution and the American soldiers must be clad.

"I suppose not," agreed Charity, looking up from her seam with a sigh as she reached over to change the cloth in the beak of her sewing bird.

It was dusk in the big kitchen, with only the firelight leaping and flaring in its great cavern of a fireplace, where Charity, who was thirteen years old, could stand erect and where the immense back-log had been dragged into its place by one of the farm horses on a certain autumn day. Now the shadows of the two girls, sitting upon their three-legged stools at each end of the old mahogany table, danced on the mud-plastered walls behind them.

"But I really do not see why we cannot think o' them," continued Charity after awhile. "One might get much pleasure that way, Hitty."

Mehitable shook her head. "It leads on to nothing," she said sagely. "And you know our mother said we were not to plan at all, with war upon us and provender growing so scarce. 'Tis now a problem to feed us," she said."

"This dreadful war!" exclaimed Charity. She dropped her sewing. "When, think you, 'twill end, Hitty?" she asked, clasping her hands.

"Indeed, I know not, Charity. No one does!" Again Mehitable shook her head gloomily. "Already it has been a weary twenty months since the British fired upon our men at Lexington."

"And almost seventeen months since we saw John!" murmured Charity. Both girls sighed at this, for their big, handsome brother's enlistment as a surgeon under General Washington had made a sorry change in their lives. No more were sly gifts of lollipops or bits of bright ribbon forthcoming from New York, where John Condit had been studying medicine up to the time of the war, with a certain famous surgeon, Doctor Carter.

"I think I be the one to miss John most," observed Mehitable, after a long silence. She glanced up at a silhouette hanging over the chimney shelf, and two bright tears shone for an instant in her black eyes.

"Nay, sister, I do!" protested Charity quickly.

"Do what?" asked a fresh voice, as the heavy outer door behind the girls was pushed open and a comely woman of forty-five entered. "Come, Hitty, help me close the door! It has commenced to pour, and ye gale be terrible!"

It needed all the strength of mother and daughter to battle against the force of that wind. With a last howl, a last flurry of wind-swept sand across the kitchen floor, a final sputtering of the fire from the unexpected draught, the great door was swung to and the heavy, hand-wrought bolt shot.

"There!" gasped Mistress Condit, standing still to recover her breath. "Such a tramp as I've had from Mistress Briggs's! The storm seemed to drive me, sheltered though I was by ye mountain! What it must be in the open places on this night!"

She paused in the act of removing her long cardinal and stood staring into space, with the look the girls had begun to dread in her eyes. They glanced at each other uneasily; then Mehitable took the dripping garment from her and led her gently to the settle beside the fire.

"There, Mother, I know ye be thinking o' John!" she exclaimed briskly. "But I'll warrant, and you could see him, he would be sitting beside just such a fire as this!"

"Mayhap!" assented her mother, gratefully relaxing upon the warm seat for the moment. "But always I have that fear he is out and in danger! Hark, see who it is, Charity, pounding so impatiently upon you door!"

Charity ran to the door and applied her eye to its peep-hole. Tis Father!" she cried. And amidst the ensuing bustle of admitting the big, jolly-looking man of the house, the storm without was soon forgotten.

The kitchen began to fill with appetizing odors from the iron skillets and kettles that hung by their bails from the long crane swung over the fire; Mehitable, dragging the table nearer the warmth of it, began supper preparations by spreading the red tablecloth, while Charity ran back and forth upon countless errands. Once, fetching her father's bootjack from upstairs, she came back almost weeping from the cold, her small nose like a red berry. Dropping the bootjack, she rubbed her aching hands.

"Cold, Cherry lass?" mumbled the Squire sympathetically, purple-faced as he struggled with his boot.

"Oh, Father, I do dread the thought o' bed! 'Tis bitter cold upstairs. Do you suppose there ever will be a time when people have a fireplace in every room."

Mehitable laughed loudly.

"But will there?" persisted Charity, glancing at her sister. "There be nothing funny in that, Hitty," she added with dignity.

"A fireplace in every room, indeed! Ho!"

And Mehitable redoubled her laughter. "Why, think o' the chimneys needed!"

"But in city houses there be a fireplace very often in every room," remarked Squire Condit, leaning back with a grunt of relief and sticking his stockinged feet toward the blaze.

Both girls turned to him eagerly, and Charity ran to clasp his arm, her cheeks crimsoning.

"Truly, Father." She paused for an awed moment. "Warm in every room!" she exclaimed; then, "Think o't, Hitty!"

Twould be heavenly!" sighed Mehitable. "And now it seems to me 'twas so at Cousin Eliza's great house at Trenton! Oh, Father, let us move to the city!"

"But what would become of the farm and the stock?" protested the Squire laughingly.

"Amos and Judd could care for them. Why not, Father?" urged Mehitable. Already, in imagination, she could see herself sweeping down narrow, winding city stairs into a warm firelit room, bright from the light of many sconces, the sheen of her satin ball gown reflecting their light. . . . She started.

"What, art dreaming again, Hitty?" smiled her father, pinching her round cheek.

"Supper!" announced Mistress Condit. And they, with the two farm men who had previously silently entered, drew up to partake of the hot soup and the Indian pudding, with healthy appetites.

"We will wait for the morrow to wash the dishes," said Mistress Condit when they had finished and Amos and Judd had vanished, "if you will promise to do them without grumbling, girls."

"Indeed, Mother," they both began and their mother nodded.

"And do let us roast apples and chestnuts, Mother," begged Charity, "while Father tells us about when he was a little lad in England."

"And warm some cider, too," continued Mehitable.

"All this for one evening!" protested Mistress Condit. "Nay, then, what about to-morrow night?"

Twill keep, to-morrow night will!" answered Mehitable recklessly, running to the door of the lean-to where the vegetables had been stored, while Charity, a-tiptoe, took down the candle from the high chimney shelf and lighted it from the blazing logs. "May we, Mother?"

Mistress Condit laughed helplessly. "What can I do, young mischiefs!" She surrendered, and the two girls disappeared.

As soon as they were gone, Mistress Condit walked quickly over to where her husband was puffing his pipe in placid comfort.

"Samuel, I be worried!" she began in a hasty whisper.

"What now, Mary?" He looked up at her in surprise, for all the trying last months had failed to mar her serene brow.

"Well, you know Squire Briggs be most partial to the King and, like many o' our neighbors, is in constant communication with the Caldwelltown Tories. To-night, while I was there, he came in most bitter, for it seems that a sally of Americans, being in desperate straits, helped themselves in passing to several fine porkers he had intended selling to Sir Henry Clinton's commissary chief. In his rage, he unintentionally let out the information that those farms set apart by Hessian spies and Tory sympathizers as being partial to General Washington are marked with the letter R for rebel and are to be raided by the Hessian foragers sent over to New Jersey by Sir Henry for that purpose. And, Samuel"—Mistress Condit's voice faltered—"though it stormed so as I came through our gate, I saw most plainly the letter R upon the gatepost!"

"But, and that be so, Mary, we will erase it!" ejaculated the Squire.

Twill do no good, I fear!" His wife shook her head. "We are doubtless marked in other ways, besides. But, hush! Not a word to the girls! They must not be worried, for life is dark enow for them, poor chicks!"

To glance at them, however, as they came giggling back into the kitchen, no one would ever think that life was gloomy for them. Mehitable's dark curls had slipped from beneath her cap as she stumbled merrily forward, her arms around a great wooden bowlful of apples and chestnuts. Charity followed more sedately with the cider jug and the candle; but her usually sober little face was gay.

"And now, Father, the story!" commanded Mehitable, when at last they were all seated before the fire, Charity upon her father's knee, her sister cross-legged at his feet to watch the chestnuts and the cider brewing beside some embers, while the mother, whose hands were never idle, knitted upon the opposite settle.

Squire Condit took several puffs at his pipe before he removed it from his mouth and held it so that its glowing contents would not spill.

"It was when I was a wee lad," he commenced obediently. And the girls exchanged delighted glances, Father, as a lad, was a most satisfying young hero!

"A rainy, windy day it was, I mind," he continued, "that the stagecoach drew up at the wharf and my mother got out of her inside seat, while I slid down from the box, and my father, already laden with some of our luggage, including Mother's precious bonnet box, stood staring at the great sailing vessel that was to carry us to our new home in America. You may well believe I was excited! Not only was I clad in my brave black satin suit and my shoes with ye silver buckles; but I, too, was carrying luggage in the way of Poll, our parrot."

"Father, are those the silver shoe buckles John wears now?" interrupted Charity.

"Aye, lass—why?" The Squire took a hasty puff at his pipe.

"Nothing—she means nothing!" exclaimed Mehitable nervously, frowning at her sister. "Do let Father go on, Cherry!"

Mistress Condit, glancing up curiously, saw that warning glance and resolved to question Mehitable later; but as events turned out, the incident was forgotten in more exciting ones.

"Well, let's see. Where was I?" The Squire puffed contemplatively.

"The parrot, Father!" prompted both girls eagerly.

"Oh yes. I verily believe you know this tale better than I!" he laughed. "Well, I had pressed forvard most anxiously after my father when 'Polly wants a cracker!' said the bird, and 'Polly wants a cracker!' imitated a pert voice behind me. I turned around indignantly to see a little girl with very red hair staring at me saucily from behind her mother's skirts."

"Oh, Samuel, not very red hair!" protested Mistress Condit with a furtive pat at the auburn curls that peeped beneath her cap.

"Oh, yes, very red hair!" insisted the Squire im- perturbably; but with a mischievous side glance at his wife, who tossed her head and laughed. "I was minded to speak reproof to the saucy wench; but her mother had already done so, and with a jerk, the little red-haired girl was led up the gangplank of the very ship my father and I had been gazing at, and I knew that she, too, was to venture across the water with us.

"It was a long voyage, that one to America; but as the days passed, I grew very fond of that little girl, whose name was Mary."

"Why, that's Mother's name!" exclaimed Charity, sitting up to stare at her mother.

"So it is!" agreed Squire Condit in solemn surprise.

"Of course it is, silly!" burst out Mehitable. "And the little red-haired girl was Mother, wasn't she, Father?"

"Now, that," said the Squire judicially, "is the question. Howbeit, to finish my tale before the apples burn." He glanced significantly at the row of scorching Jonathans which Mehitable promptly turned. "One day little Mary appeared with drooping face. 'My head doth ache!' quoth she, and she coughed, though it was a clear, warm day.

"Her mother bundled her down the ship's cabin, but not before I had stolen a kiss, for by that time I loved little Mary as dearly as ten years can love eight years. Then it was announced that little Mary had the measles!"

"Oh dear!" exclaimed tender-hearted Charity. "Did she really, Father?"

"Yes," nodded father, "really, Cherry! For long days, then, I hung around the berth where lay Mary, until, one morning, I, too, woke with a headache and a cough.

Alas, Samuel, you have the measles! I wonder how ye caught them!' cried my mother. And so I did have them! I was a pretty sight, for measles are not beauteous! I was very ill, for the measles 'struck in,' and with them my love"—and here the Squire stole another look at his wife's curls—"for red-haired girls!"

"Oh, me!" sighed Charity, as her father stopped and puffed violently at his pipe. "What became o' the parrot, Father?"

"Why, I gave Poll to little Mary when she got well again."

"And she cherished her for years, until Poll died of old age," finished Mistress Condit, smiling and gathering up her knitting. "But come, girls!"

"Aye, 'tis late, lassies!" said the Squire.

"But our apples! We must have our apples!" And two pairs of wide-awake eyes were studying the apples calculatingly to see how long they could be made to last when through the merry chatter came a wild, long drawn out cry.

"Wolves!" Mistress Condit's hands flew to press against her heart as she gazed, terror-stricken, at her husband. Pausing, pipe in hand, he stood listening until above the crackle of the fire came again the cry. Then he shook his head.

"Nay, I think not! But we shall soon see!" And striding forward, he flung open the door.

Only the crazy howling of wind and storm came to the listeners' ears. Silence reigned except for the gale.

"Nothing there, Samuel?" queried Mistress Condit tremblingly, at last.

From behind her voluminous skirts peered the frightened faces of the girls. Strange, dark war-times these were, when they never could be sure whether it was friend or foe or wild animal approaching!

"No one there, Father?" repeated Charity's sweet voice anxiously.

"Nay, I think not!" shouted back the Squire, moving forward to the edge of the doorstep, where he stood peering through the curtain of rain and sleet that beat upon him. "No one here2Stay! What is that out by yon tree!"

And without another word, unarmed, he plunged off the doorstep to disappear into the teeth of the storm!

The Strange Guest

FOR long minutes the two girls and their mother stood there, minutes that seemed like months, that seemed like years. Then Squire Condit's voice hailed them from the dooryard and soon, as Mistress Condit took the candle that Mehitable had brought her and held it aloft, they saw him staggering toward them half-carrying, half-dragging a human form.

"Wine, Mary, for this poor fellow!" he gasped, stumbling past her into the kitchen.

As the firelight flashed upon the still figure their father had placed upon the floor, the two girls drew back with exclamations of fear.

"An Indian, Father?" faltered Mehitable.

"Aye—an Indian! But a human being like you or me, Hitty, and as such, subject to death as we!" answered her father reprovingly.

"Poor Indian!" said Charity immediately, in her gentle voice. Then she shrank back, for at that instant the Indian's eyes flew open and he stared at her with the uncanny alertness of a wild wood-thing caught in a trap.

"Here, take a sip of this, my man," said Squire Condit, raising the Indian's head to the pewter mug Mistress Condit had handed him. "I'll warrant ye that will put new life into your veins!" he added half jokingly.

But the Indian's eyes searched the room, stared at the little group of householders around him with no abatement of tension in their depths, and at last, giving a sudden spring, he regained his feet and stood, tall and straight, before them.

"Ugh! I go now!" he grunted, turning toward the door. But the Squire seized him by the arm.

"What—out into that storm!" he exclaimed. "Nay, 'twould be sure death and that—Indian or no Indian—I'll see no man go to! So stay ye here before the fire. To-morrow ye may go." And he commenced laboriously to pantomime the act of going to sleep before the fire. Charity and Mehitable watching him with breathless interest.

The Indian, however, for the first time allowed a gleam of wintry amusement to flit across his face as he watched the exaggerated antics his host was performing to make his meaning perfectly clear.

"Spik English," he offered at last, when the Squire, worn out by his efforts, had dropped in exhaustion upon the fireside settle.

"Speak English! Well, gadzooks, why didn't ye say so!" roared the Squire indignantly. "Did ye ever hear the like, Mary?" he complained to his wife. "And I tiring myself out to give him understanding!"

Mistress Condit smiled. "Nay, he meant no harm, Samuel," she answered soothingly. "Let us to bed, now. It waxes late. The Indian may place the black bearskin beneath him and wrap in that buffalo robe, an he likes. Charity, the warming pan!"

Charity, obediently taking down the brass warming pan and filling it with embers from the fire, was turning away when the Indian touched her lightly upon the arm. She shot a glance of half terror at him and then an imploring one at her parents and sister at the other end of the kitchen; but they were busily conversing and she stopped, tremblingly.

The Indian turned and pointed to the silhouette hanging over the chimney shelf.

"Him—John?" he muttered, in so low a tone that Charity had to incline her ear toward him to catch his words. She started back in astonishment.

"You know John?" Unconsciously she, too, whispered it.

She was wheeling toward her parents to acquaint them with this amazing fact when the Indian's swift fingers lightly touched her lips and glancing up at him she saw him give a slight, imperative shake of his head. Mistress Condit, turning soon afterward, stared in displeasure.

"What! Loitering, Charity!" she frowned. And Charity, with a little shiver of excitement, stepped past the strange guest toward the narrow stairs that led to the loft rooms above.

Upstairs there was no loitering. Swiftly the beds were warmed by means of the warming pan inserted between the icy sheets and moved up and dovm over the smooth surface of the lower one. Night attire, including snugly fitting nightcaps, was donned, and stepping up the queer little wooden steps into their high four-posted bed, Mehitable and Charity sank almost out of sight in the feather mattress and were soon fast asleep.

But down below, lying upon the hearth with his eyes focussed upon the silhouette of young Dr. John Condit, the Indian lay for a long time awake, while the storm beat and howled at the door and the wolves upon the Newark mountain above him howled, too.

It was early the next morning that Squire Condit, entering the kitchen unexpectedly, caught the Indian in the act of stealing a silver candlestick holder, a cherished heirloom brought over from England which occupied the position of honor on the dresser. The Squire's bushy eyebrows met in displeasure over angry eyes and, with an agility beyond his years, he leaped for and secured his flintlock from its hook near the door before the Indian could turn.

"Hands up!" he ordered then, sternly. The Indian, his lips tightening to a single narrow line, carefully replaced the candlestick holder in its place before raising his hands.

"Ye thievin' varmint!" ejaculated the Squire. "Not an honest hair to your head! Here I give ye shelter from last night's storm and this is your gratitude. Gratitude!" He repeated it contemptuously. "Charity!" he called, raising his voice.

"Yes, Father." Charity came running down the stairs to stop and stare in puzzled wonder at her father with his aimed gun.

"Fetch me that rawhide from the wall!"

A spasm of resentment gleamed in the red man's eyes, but his face maintained its stoical expression and his hands high above his proud head did not waver. Charity brought the evil-looking strap to her father and held it out tremblingly.

"Now take this flintlock and aim at the rascal's heart. I'll have no thievin' on my premises and I'm going to teach this fellow a lesson!"

But Charity, instead of doing as her father directed, suddenly clasped her hands and burst into tears.

"Ah, no, Father—please!" she sobbed.

The Squire, who it must be confessed was already repenting his rash threat, lowered his gun promptly.

"Ye hear that?" he asked the Indian fiercely. "Go, then, ingrate, and know ye owe your escape to the tender pleading of this little lass!"

The Indian turned with one movement of his lithe body and, without a look of gratitude at anyone, stalked to the door Charity had run to open for him and passed silently out into the November dawn.

"I thought I heard voices, Samuel," said Mistress Condit, entering at this point and going over to the fireplace to begin her breakfast preparations.

"I hope Amos is through his chores ere now, though I doubt it! This rheumatism—if only John were home to cure it, so I could be out attending things myself!" The Squire hobbled toward the door, where he turned to glance at his wife. "So ye did hear voices, Mary! That thievin' varmint! Tell your mother, Charity," he bade his young daughter.

"My silver candlestick holder!" exclaimed Mistress Condit, when, the Squire having disappeared in the direction of the stock barns, Charity gave her mother a hasty account of what had happened. Mistress Condit's thin cheeks flushed with anger. "And why did ye stop your father, since the scoundrel so well deserved his beating!"

Charity bit her lip at this reproof.

"I don't know why I did, Mother, in truth," she answered, a catch in her breath. "Except that—oh, he looked like a trapped beast of the woods here, to me—helpless—caught—I could not bear to have him hurt!"

"Humph! Remember, Charity, that these same wild things burn folks' houses i' the West and scalp women and children and dance their horrid war dances around the ruins," returned Mistress Condit grimly. "It were not wise to show too much sympathy for Indians!"

"But perhaps—he is a good Indian!" ventured Charity.

"There are no good Indians," answered her mother in a tone of finality. And with that the subject was closed.

The November days passed. Discouraging, indeed, was the war news that filtered across from the enemy, entrenched in New York City under Sir Henry Clinton, to the Newark Mountains, at the foot of which the Condit farm was situated. There were very few roads, or even paths, between the "Town by the River," as Newark was called then, and the outlying farms and plantations of the First and the Second mountains. Swamps and woodland separated these meagre hamlets.

General Washington, John Condit had written his father, after his successful siege and capture of Boston in the early spring of 1776, had passed a summer that, except for Colonel Moultrie's fine victory at Charleston, South Carolina, in which the British had lost and had sailed for New York, and the Declaration of Independence which had been adopted by Congress, was rather a discouraging one. The Americans had suffered a heavy loss on Long Island, thereby losing New York, so that since September Washington had been slowly but steadily retreating in an effort to hold some of New Jersey. Rumor had started vague tales of the Battle of White Plains in New York; but as yet no definite word had come from Dr. John Condit to his anxious family.

The two girls, however, were almost too busy to note the passing of the eventful days. Their time was completely filled, now, from morning, when they rose by candlelight, to bedtime, with all of those laborious household tasks which even the very young girls had to share. There were candle-dripping, soap-making, spinning, weaving, cooking—and even the simple operation of dish-washing became an intricate one when the water had to be brought by the well sweep—a long pole so weighted at one end that a slight pressure brought up the bucket attached to the other end—from the well, carried into the house, heated more or less slowly over the open fire and dipped from its heavy iron pot into the dishpan. The dishes were rarely of china—those were prized and saved. Trenchers of wood, perhaps beautifully turned and polished, gourds and pewter mugs, spoons and two-tined forks of pewter were the ordinary household essentials. But I am sure that the roasted meats served on the wooden trencher tasted exactly as savory as those now served on china or silver platters, and that the well water or icy spring water was fully as sweet as that now drawn from faucets.

One day, as it was growing dusk, Mistress Condit retired to the fireside settle and fell into a heavy, feverish sleep. The two girls had been invited to a sewing bee at Miranda Briggs's and had spent three happy hours there. But approaching their own home, what was their amazement to find the kitchen dark and still as they pushed open the door.

"Oh, Cherry, what do you suppose2" Mehitable was beginning, when the blurred figure of her mother stirred in the shadows.

"Hitty?" asked Mistress Condit, in a hoarse voice.

Mehitable threw off her long cape to run over and stand beside her mother. "Yes, Mother, what is it? What is the matter?" she asked anxiously.

"I don't know," answered Mistress Condit vaguely. "I must have caught cold yesterday while out salting the pork and working around the smokehouse, for my head aches and my throat is sore—'tis doubtless a touch of chills and fever. Oh, how I wish your brother John were here!" She uttered a sudden exclamation of dismay. "Why the fire is out! However did that happen! And your father took the flint and steel with him to the north pasture to burn some stumps there!"

Charity was kneeling before the dark fireplace, tentatively poking among the dead embers.

"Why, even the back-log is out!" she said in a puzzled voice. "Whatever could have happened. Mother?"

"I remember now!" Mistress Condit dragged herself erect with a groan. "The soup upset, the bail slipped upon the crane—and such a hissing as took place!" She sat in rueful thought for a moment. "Well," she resumed, rousing herself with a sigh, "there is but one thing to do, Mehitable. We cannot wait until your father comes home—we must borrow some live coals from the Briggses. Take you the kettle and hurry, for I do dislike supper to be tardy when your father comes in from foddering the stock. You will not be afraid, Mehitable?"

"Why, Mother, indeed I am almost fifteen," answered Mehitable in a hurt voice. Her honest black eyes gazed at her mother in reproach. "But it won't take more than half an hour, I know. Sure, Miranda will be surprised to see me again so soon!" she finished, with an irrepressible twinkle.

Charity ran to get the iron bucket which was preserved for just such energencies, while Mehitable once more donned her heavy cape and pulled its hood well over her head.

"Don't you think I had better go, too?" asked the younger sister anxiously. "Won't you be afraid, Hitty? 'Tis monstrous dark outside and the path through the woods is a lonely one."

"Nonsense!" returned Mehitable sturdily, catching up the iron bucket. "Have I not trod that same path a hundred times in daylight! Why should I be afraid of shadows, Charity?"

"But perhaps—that Indian, you know!" began Charity.

"Silly child!" And Mehitable laughed with the superiority of fifteen years. "Father says he was doubtless an Indian runner for the British Army. I'm sure he's far away by now."

"Do not put foolish notions into your sister's head, Charity," interrupted Mistress Condit. She laid her own head back against the settle with a weary little sigh of pain.

"You must stay with Mother, Charity" whispered Mehitable. "Better cover her with the buffalo robe; it grows cold in here without the fire. Good-bye, Mother," she added aloud cheerfully. "I shall not be gone long."

"Promise me to go by the lower road and not by the wood path. 'Tis better!" said Mistress Condit, rousing herself with an effort.

Mehitable hesitated. The valley road, barely wide enough for an ox-cart, following the foot of the First Mountain, was a good twenty minutes longer than the wood path. But reading aright the anxiety on her mother's face, she nodded her head and slipped lightly out the door.

It was indeed lonely along the road. But at last the welcome lights of the Briggses' farmhouse revealed themselves through the gloom, and it was not long then before Mehitable was back in the kitchen she had just quitted an hour or so before.

Everything was in its usual prim order there. Every vestige of the sewing bee had disappeared and Mistress Briggs and her daughter were hastily preparing supper against the arrival of Squire Briggs. As a matter of fact, Squire Briggs, being notably close-fisted and penurious, knew nothing whatever about the sewing bee. All the party viands—the pound cake, the pumpkin pies, the tarts—had been prepared in secret by his wife, and now nothing remained to tell the tale save the happy light in Miranda's eyes and the high red spots of excitement in Mistress Briggs's cheeks.