The butcher's boy brought the tidings of the auction sale in at the kitchen door of the Old Ladies' Home even while Angy and Abe were lingering over their posies, and the inmates of the Home were waiting to receive the old wife with the greater sympathy and the deeper spirit of welcome from the fact that two of the twenty-nine members had known her from girlhood, away back in the boarding-school days.

"Yop," said the boy, with one eye upon the stout matron, who was critically examining the meat that he had brought. "Yop, the auction's over, an' Cap'n Rose, he—Don't that cut suit you, Miss Abigail? You won't find a better, nicer, tenderer, and more juicier piece of shoulder this side of New York. Take it back, did you say? All right, ma'am, all right!" His face assumed a look of resignation: these old ladies made his life a martyrdom. He used to tell the "fellers" that he spent one half his time carrying orders back and forth from the Old Ladies' Home. But now, in spite of his meekness of manner, he did not intend to take this cut back. So with Machiavellian skill he hastened on with his gossip.

"Yop, an' they only riz one hundred dollars an' two cents—one hundred dollars an' a postage-stamp. I guess it's all up with the cap'n an' the Old Men's. I don't see 'em hangin' out no 'Welcome' sign on the strength of that."

"You're a horrid, heartless little boy!" burst forth Miss Abigail, and, flinging the disputed meat on the table, she sank down into the chair, completely overcome by sorrow and indignation. "You'll be old yerself some day," she sobbed, not noticing that he was stealthily edging toward the door, one eye on her, one on to-morrow's pot-roast. "I tell yew, Tommy," regaining her accustomed confiding amiability, as she lifted the corner of her apron to wipe her eyes, "Miss Ellie will feel some kind o' bad, tew. Yer know me an' her an' Angy all went ter school tergether, although Miss Ellie is so much younger 'n the rest o' us that we call her the baby. Here! Where—"

But he was gone. Sighing heavily, the matron put the meat in the ice-box, and then made her slow, lumbering way into the front hall, or community-room, where the sisters were gathered in a body to await the new arrival.

"Waal, say!" she supplemented, after she had finished telling her pitiably brief story, "thar's trouble ernough ter go 'round, hain't thar?"

Aunt Nancy Smith, who never believed in wearing her heart on her sleeve, sniffed and thumped her cane on the floor.

"Yew young folks," she affirmed, herself having seen ninety-nine winters, while Abigail had known but a paltry sixty-five, "yew allers go an' cut yer pity on the skew-gee. I don't see nothin' ter bawl an' beller erbout. I say that a'ny man what can't take kere o' himself, not ter mention his wife, should orter go ter the poorhouse."

But the matriarch's voice quavered even more than usual, and as she finished she hastily bent down and felt in her deep skirt-pocket for her snuff-box.

Now the Amazonian Mrs. Homan, a widow for the third time, made sturdy retort:

"That's jest like yew old maids—always a-blamin' the men. Yew kin jest bet I never would have let one of my husbands go ter the poorhouse. It would have mortified me dretful. It must be a purty poor sort of a woman what can't take care of one man and keep a roof over his head. Why, my second, Oliver G., used ter say—"

"Oh!" Miss Ellie wrung her hands, "can't we do somethin'?"

"I could do a-plenty," mourned Miss Abigail, "ef I only had been savin'. Here I git a salary o' four dollars a month, an' not one penny laid away."

"Yew fergit," spoke some one gently, "that it takes consid'able ter dress a matron proper."

Aunt Nancy, who had been sneezing furiously at her own impotence, now found her speech again.

"We're a nice set ter talk erbout dewin' somethin'—a passel o' poor ole critters like us!" Her cackle of embittered laughter was interrupted by the low, cultivated voice of the belle of the Home, "Butterfly Blossy."

"We've got to do something," said Blossy firmly.

When Blossy spoke with such decision, every one of the sisters pricked up her ears. Blossy might be "a shaller-pate"; she might arrange the golden-white hair of her head as befitted the crowning glory of a young girl, with puffs and rolls and little curls, and—more than one sister suspected—with the aid of "rats"; she might gown herself elaborately in the mended finery of the long ago, the better years; she might dress her lovely big room—the only double bedchamber in the house, for which she had paid a double entrance fee—in all sorts of gewgaws, little ornaments, hand-painted plaques of her own producing, lace bedspreads, embroidered splashers and pillow-shams; she might even permit herself a suitor who came twice a year more punctually than the line-storms, to ask her withered little hand in marriage—but her heart was in the right place, and on occasion she had proved herself a master hand at "fixin' things."

"Yes," said she, rising to her feet and flinging out her arms with an eloquent gesture, "we've got to do something, and there's just one thing to do, girls: take the captain right here—here"—she brought her hands to the laces on her bosom—"to our hearts!"

At first there was silence, with the ladies staring blankly at Blossy and then at one another. Had they heard aright? Then there came murmurs and exclamations, with Miss Abigail's voice gasping above the others:

"What would the directors say?"

"What do they always say when we ask a favor?" demanded Blossy. "'How much will it cost?' It won't cost a cent."

"Won't, eh?" snapped Aunt Nancy. "How on arth be yew goin' ter vittle him? I hain't had a second dish o' peas this year."

"Some men eat more an' some less," remarked Sarah Jane, as ill-favored a spinster as ever the sun shone on; "generally it means so much grub ter so much weight."

Miss Abigail glanced up at the ceiling, while Lazy Daisy, who had refused to tip the beam for ten years, surreptitiously hid an apple into which she had been biting.

"Le' 's have 'em weighed," suggested a widow, Ruby Lee, with a pretty, well-preserved little face and figure, "an' ef tergether they don't come up to the heartiest one of us—"

Miss Abigail made hasty interruption:

"Gals, hain't yew never noticed that the more yew need the more yew git? Before Jenny Bell went to live with her darter I didn't know what I should dew, for the taters was gittin' pooty low. Yew know she used ter eat twenty ter a meal an' then look hungry at the platter. An' then ef old Square Ely didn't come a-drivin' up one mornin' with ten bushel in the farm wagon! He'd been savin' 'em fer us all winter fer fear we might run short in the spring. Gals, thar's one thing yew kin depend on, the foresightedness of the Lord. I hain't afraid ter risk a-stretchin' the board an' keep o' thirty ter pervide ample fer thirty-one. Naow, haow many of yew is willin' ter try it?"

Every head nodded, "I am"; every eye was wet with the dew of merciful kindness; and Mrs. Homan and Sarah Jane, who had flung plates at each other only that morning, were observed to be holding hands.

"But haow on arth be we a-goin' ter sleep him?" proceeded the matron uneasily. "Thar hain't a extry corner in the hull place. Puttin' tew people in No. 30 is out of the question—it's jest erbout the size of a Cinderella shoebox, anyhow, an' the garret leaks—"

She paused, for Blossy was pulling at her sleeve, the real Blossy, warmhearted, generous, self-deprecating.

"I think No. 30 is just the coziest little place for one! Do let me take it, Miss Abigail, and give the couple my great big barn of a room."

Aunt Nancy eyed her suspiciously. "Yew ain't a-gwine ter make a fool o' yerself, an' jump over the broomstick ag'in?" For Blossy's old suitor, Samuel Darby, had made one of his semiannual visits only that morning.

The belle burst into hysterical and self-conscious laughter, as she found every glance bent upon her.

"Oh, no, no; not that. But I confess that I am tired to death of this perpetual dove-party. I just simply can't live another minute without a man in the house.

"Now, Miss Abigail," she added imperiously, "you run across lots and fetch him home."