The next morning Lois had gone to her school and her mother had not yet shown the letter to her.

She went about as usual, doing her housework slowly and vigorously.

Mrs.Field's cleanliness was proverbial in this cleanly New England neighborhood.

It almost amounted to asceticism; her rooms, when her work was finished, had the bareness and purity of a nun's cell.

There was never any bloom of dust on Mrs.Field's furniture; there was only the hard, dull glitter of the wood.