So she does Rob and Ike and Pete and the whole healthy, ramping train who fill the Pitkin farm- house with a racket of boots and boys.

So she has made every one a tart with his initial on it and a saucy motto or two, "just to keep them from being conceited, you know." All day she keeps busy by the side of the deacon's wife--a delicate, thin, quiet little woman, with great thoughtful eyes and a step like a snowflake.

New England had of old times, and has still, perhaps, in her farm-houses, these women who seem from year to year to develop in the spiritual sphere as the bodily form shrinks and fades.

While the cheek grows thin and the form spare, the will-power grows daily stronger; though the outer man perish, the inner man is renewed day by day.

The worn hand that seems so weak yet holds every thread and controls every movement of the most complex family life, and wonders are daily accomplished by the presence of a woman who seems little more than a spirit.