She was reluctant to end her
evening so soon, but determined to act the part of considerate
hostess. The guest was as wide awake as ever: eleven o'clock was the
best part of his evening.
"Cider?" he suggested, with an expectant smile, and Abby Hender was on
her feet in a moment. When she had brought a pitcher from the pantry,
he took a candle from the high shelf and led the way.
"To think of your remembering our old cellar candlestick all these
years!" laughed the pleased woman, as she followed him down the steep
stairway, and then laughed still more at his delight in the familiar
look of the place.
"Unchanged as the pyramids!" he said. "I suppose those pound sweetings
that used to be in that farthest bin were eaten up months ago?"
It was plain to see that the household stores were waning low, as
befitted the time of year, but there was still enough in the old
cellar. Care and thrift and gratitude made the poor farmhouse a rich
place. This woman of real ability had spent her strength from youth to
age, and had lavished as much industry and power of organization in
her narrow sphere as would have made her famous in a wider one. Joseph
Laneway could not help sighing as he thought of it. How many things
this good friend had missed, and yet how much she had been able to win
that makes everywhere the very best of life! Poor and early widowed,
there must have been a constant battle with poverty on that stony
Harran farm, whose owners had been pitied even in his early boyhood,
when the best of farming life was none too easy.
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