"It's very queer to hear you talk," said Norton.

"Queer?" said Matilda.

"It's so queer, that you have no idea, Pink, how queer it is. I don't know what you want."

"I know what I want," said Matilda. "I want to know more of G.o.d's beautiful work. Mr. Richmond says the earth is full of it; and I think it would be nice to be seeing it always; but I know so little."

"You'll learn," said Norton. "I wonder if mamma will send you to school, Pink? We must get home to-morrow! We have staid a terrible long time at the parsonage."

CHAPTER III.

When Matilda came down stairs the next morning to get breakfast, she found Miss Redwood in the kitchen. The fire was going, the kitchen was warm; Miss Redwood was preparing some potatoes for baking.

"Good morning!" said she. "Here I am again. It does seem funny to be washing the potatoes to put in the stove, just as if folks hadn't been sick and dying, you may say, and getting well, and all that, since I touched 'em last. Well! life's a queer thing; and it don't go by the rule of three, not by no means."

"What rule does it go by?" said Matilda, leaning on the table and looking up at the housekeeper.

"La! I don't know," said Miss Redwood. "I know what I've been workin'

by all these weeks, pretty much; I kept at my multiplication table; but I couldn't get no further most days than the very beginning--'Once one is one.' I tried hard to make it out two; but 'twas beyond me. I've learned that much, anyhow."

"Didn't Mrs. Laval help?"

"She helped all she could, poor critter, till she was 'most beat out. I declare I was sorry for her, next to the sick ones. She did all she could. She turned in to cook; and she didn't know no more about it than I know about talkin' any language beside my own. Not so much; for I kin tell French when I hear it; but she didn't know boiling water."

"What can I do to help you, Miss Redwood?" Matilda asked, suddenly remembering the present.

"There aint nothin' to do, child, 'cept what I'm doin'. The breakfast table is sot. I guess you've had _your_ hands full, as well as the rest of us. But I declare you've kept things pretty straight. I don't let the b.u.t.ter set in the pantry, though; it goes down cellar when I'm to home."

"That kitchen pantry is cold, Miss Redwood."

"It's too cold, child. b.u.t.ter hadn't ought to be where it kin freeze, or get freezing hard; it takes the sweetness out of it. You didn't know that. And the broom and pan I left at the head of the coal stairs. They ain't there now."

Matilda fetched them.

"The minister said you kept things in train, as if you'd been older,"

Miss Redwood went on. "I was always askin'; and he made me feel pretty comfortable. He said _he_ was."

"We have had a very nice time, Miss Redwood. We hadn't the least trouble about anything."

"Trouble was our meat and drink down yonder," said Miss Redwood. "I thought two o' them poor furriners would surely give up; but they didn't; and it's over with. Praise the Lord! And I'm as glad to be home again as if I had found a fortin. But I was glad to be there, too. When a man--or a woman--knows she's in her place, she's just in the pleasantest spot she kin get to; so I think. And I knew I was in my place there. But dear, Mrs. Laval thinks your place is with her now; so she bid me tell you to be ready."

"When?"

"Well, some time along in the morning she will send the carriage to bring you, she said."

"Has Francis come back?"

"Who's Francis?"

"I mean the coachman."

"I don't know n.o.body's names," said Miss Redwood; "'cept the men I took care of; and I guess I had my own names for them. I couldn't pucker my mouth to call them after Mrs. Laval."

"Why, what did you call them?" said Matilda. "I know what their names were; they were Jules and Pierre Failly. What did you call them?"

"It didn't make no odds," said Miss Redwood, "so long as they knew I was speaking to 'em; and _that_ they knew; 'cause when I raised one man's head up, he knew I warn't speaking to the other man. I called one of 'em Johnson, and 'tother Peter. It did just as well. I dare say now," said Miss Redwood, with a bit of a smile on her face, "they thought Johnson meant beef tea, and Peter meant a spoonful of medicine.

It did just as well. Come, dear; you may go get the coffee canister for me; for now I'm in a hurry. There ain't coffee burned for breakfast."

It was Matilda's last breakfast at the parsonage. She could have been sorry, only that she was so glad. After breakfast she had her bag to pack; and a little later the grey ponies trotted round the sweep and drew up at the door. Matilda had watched them turning in at the gate and coming down the lane, stepping so gayly to the sound of their bells; and they drew a dainty light sleigh covered with a wealth of fine buffalo robes. The children bade good bye to Mr. Richmond, and jumped in, and tucked the buffalo robes round them; the ponies shook their heads and began to walk round the sweep again; then getting into the straight line of the lane, away they went with a merry pace, making the snow fly.

It seemed to Matilda that such a feeling of luxury had never come over her as she felt then. The sleigh was so easy; the seats were so roomy; the buffalo robes were so soft and warm and elegant, and she was so happy. Norton pulled one of the robes up so as almost to cover her; no cold could get at her, for her feet were in another. Furs over and under her, she had nothing to do but to look and be whirled along over the smooth snow to the tune of the sleigh bells. It was charming, to look and see what the snow had done with the world. Thick, thick mantles of it lay upon the house roofs; how could it all stay there?

The trees were loaded, bending their heads and drooping their branches under the weight which was almost too much for them. The fences had a pretty dressing, like the thick white frosting of a cake; the fields and gardens and roadway lay hidden under the soft warm carpet that was spread everywhere. But the snow clouds were all gone; and the clearest bright blue sky looked down through the white-laden tree branches.

"How much there is of it!" said Matilda.

"What?" said Norton.

"Why, I mean snow, Norton."

"Oh! Yes; there is apt to be a good deal of it," said Norton, "when it falls as hard as it can all one day and two nights."

"But Norton, to think that all that snow is just those elegant little star feathers piled up; all over the fields and house roofs, a foot and a half thick, it is all those feathery stars!"

"Well," said Norton; "what of it?"

"Why it is wonderful," said Matilda. "It almost seems like a waste, doesn't it? only that couldn't be."

"A waste?" said Norton. "A waste of what?"

"Why n.o.body sees, or thinks, that the street is covered with such beautiful things--the street and the fields and the houses; people only think it is snow, and that's all; when it is just little wonders of beauty, of a great many sorts too. It seems very strange."

"Only to you," said Norton. "It'll be rich to shew you things."

"But why do you suppose it is so, Norton? I should like to ask Mr.

Richmond."

"Mr. Richmond couldn't tell," said Norton.

"It must be that G.o.d is so rich," Matilda went on reverently. "So rich!" she repeated, looking at the piled-up burden of snow along the house roofs of the street. "But then, Norton, he must care to have things beautiful."

"Pink!" exclaimed Norton, looking at his little companion with an air half of amus.e.m.e.nt and half of something like vexation.

"Well, don't you think so? Because n.o.body sees those white feathers of frost piled up there, and these that the horses are treading under feet. They do n.o.body any good."

"It does you good to know they are there," said Norton.