"I suppose you knit?" remarked Miss Recompense.

"No. I don't know how. Betty showed me a little. And Aunt Elizabeth is going to teach me to make a stocking. It seems very easy when you see other people do it," and Doris sighed. "But I am afraid I am not very smart about a good many things besides tables."

That honest admission rather annoyed Uncle Win. Elizabeth had said it as well. For his part he did not see that reading the Bible through by the time you were eight years old and knitting a pile of stockings was proof of extraordinary ability.

"What kind of fancy work can you do?" asked Miss Recompense.

"I've begun a sampler. That isn't hard. And Miss Arabella taught me to hem and to darn and to make lace."

"Make lace! What kind of lace?"

"Like the beautiful lace Madam Sheafe makes. Only I never did any so wide. But Miss Arabella used to. Betty took me there one afternoon.

Madam Sheafe has such a lovely little house. And, oh, Uncle Win, she can talk French a little."

He smiled and nodded.

"You see," began Doris with sweet seriousness, "there was no one to make shirts for, and I suppose Miss Arabella thought it wasn't worth while.

But I hemmed some on Uncle Leverett's, and Aunt Elizabeth said it was very nicely done."

"I dare say." She looked as if anything she undertook would be nicely done, Miss Recompense thought.

"Betty was learning housekeeping when she went to Hartford. I think that is very nice. To make pies and bread and cake, and roast chickens and turkeys and everything. But little girls have to go to school first. Six years is a long time, isn't it?"

A half-smile crossed the grave face of Miss Recompense.

"It seems a long time to a little girl, no doubt, but when you are older it passes very rapidly. There are years that prove all too short for the work crowded in them, and then they begin to lengthen again, though I suppose that is because we no longer hurry to get a certain amount of work done."

"I wish the afternoons could be longer."

"They will be in May. I like the long afternoons too, though the winter evenings by a cheerful fire are very enjoyable."

"The world is so beautiful," said Doris, "that you can hardly tell which you do like best. Only the summer, with its flowers and the sweet, green out-of-doors, fills one with a kind of thanksgiving. Why did they not have Thanksgiving in the summer?"

"Because we give thanks for a bountiful harvest."

"Oh," Doris responded.

Uncle Winthrop watched her as she chattered on, her voice like a soft, purling rill. Presently Dinah called Miss Recompense out in the kitchen to consult her about the breakfast, for she went to bed as soon as she had the kitchen set to rights. Then Doris glanced over to him in a shy, asking fashion, and brought her chair to his side. He inquired about Father Langhorne, and found he had been educated in Paris, and was really a Roman priest.

Perhaps it was the province of childhood to see good in everybody. Or was it due to the simple life, the absence of that introspection, which had already done so much to make the New England conscience supersensitive and strenuous.

When Miss Recompense returned she found them deep in French again. Doris laughed softly when Uncle Winthrop blundered a little, and perhaps he did it now and then purposely.

The big old clock that said "Forever, never!" long before Longfellow's time, measured off nine hours.

"It's funny," said Doris, "but I'm not a bit sleepy, and at Uncle Leverett's I almost nod, sometimes. Maybe it's the French."

"I should not wonder," and Uncle Win smiled.

"We will both go--it is about my time," remarked Miss Recompense. "Your uncle sits up all hours of the night."

"And would like to sleep all hours of the morning," he returned humorously, "but Miss Recompense won't let me. If she raises her little finger the whole house moves."

"Then she doesn't raise it very often," said that lady. "But it does seem a sin to sleep away good wholesome daylight."

There were some candlesticks on a kind of secretary with a shelf-like top, and she lighted one, stepping out in the kitchen to see that all was safe and to bid Cato lock up. When she returned the candle was sending out its cheerful beam, so she nodded to Doris, who said good-night to Uncle Winthrop and followed her.

Doris had an odd, company-like feeling. Her little bed was pretty, and the room had a fragrance of summer time, of roses and lavender. Miss Recompense stirred the fire and put on a big log. Then she sat down by the stand and read her nightly chapter, turning a little to give Doris a kind of privacy.

"I hope you will sleep well. Your uncle thought you would be lonesome in the guest chamber."

"I would ever so much rather be here. And the bed is so small and cunning, just the bed for a little girl. Thank you ever so many times."

She said her prayers and breathed a soft good-night to the fire. And though she did not feel strange nor sleepy, and wondered about Betty and a dozen other things, one of the last remembrances was the glimmer of the candle on the wall, and the soft rustling of the blaze, that said "Snow, snow, snow."

CHAPTER XI

A LITTLE CHRISTMAS

Sure enough, it snowed the next morning--one of the soft, clinging storms that loaded every branch with a furry aspect, made mounds of the shrubs, and wrapped the south sides of the houses with a mantle of dazzling whiteness. Now and then a patch fell off, and a long pendant would swing from the trees, and finally drop. It was a delight to see them.

The breakfast was laid on the same small table in use last night, but Cato brought in everything hot, and "waited" as Barby used at home.

Uncle Winthrop said she looked bright as a rose, and her cheeks had a delicate pink.

Afterward he invited her in his study and told her she might look about and perhaps find a book to entertain herself with while he wrote some letters.

"Thank you. I hope I shall not disturb you."

"Oh, no." He felt somehow he could answer for her. She was so gentle in her movements, and he really wanted to see how he liked having a little girl about. There was a vague idea in his mind that he might decide to have her here some day, since Miss Recompense had taken a sort of fancy to her.

Oh, what a luxury it was to wander softly about and read titles and look at bindings and speculate on what she would like! They had very few books at Uncle Leverett's. Some volume of sermons, a few biographies that she had found rather dreary, a history of the French-Canadian War, and some of Poor Richard's Almanacs, which she thought the most amusing of all.

There was a circulating library that Warren patronized occasionally.

There was also the nucleus of a free library, but so far people had been too busy to think much about reading, except the scholarly minds. Books were expensive, too, and very few persons accumulated any stock of them.

Of Mr. Adams' collection some had come to him from his father, and Cousin Charles, who had been called a "queer stick," had some English, Latin, and Italian poets that he had bequeathed to the book lover.

Winthrop Adams was a collector of several things beside books. Now and then at an auction sale on someone's death he picked up odd articles that were of value. And so his study was a kind of conglomerate. He had a cabinet of coins from different parts of the world and curios from India and Egypt. Napoleon's campaign in Egypt had awakened a good deal of interest in the country of the Pharaohs.

Doris was so still he glanced around presently. She was curled up in the corner of the chimney, a book on her knees and her head bent over until the curls fell about her in a cloud. When Elizabeth had spoken of the benefit it might be to a growing child to have them cut he had protested at once. They were rarely beautiful, he decided now, gleaming gold in the firelight.

She had a feeling presently that someone was looking at her, so she raised her head, shook away the curls, and smiled.

"Did you find something?"