Master of the Vineyard

Discussing the Stranger "I'd know whether 'twas a wig or not, if I saw it once," Grandmother muttered. "There ain't nobody that can fool me about false hair."

"I guess you ain't likely to see it," retorted Matilda, viciously. "All we'll ever hear about her'll be from the milk folks."

"Maybe I could see her," ventured Rosemary, cautiously. "I could put on my best white dress and go to see Mrs. Marsh, to-morrow or next day, after I get the work done up. I could find out who she was and all about her, and come back and tell you."

For an instant the stillness was intense, then both women turned to her. "You!" they said, scornfully, in the same breath.

"Yes," said Grandmother, after an impressive pause, "I reckon you'll be puttin' on your best dress and goin' up to Marshs' to see a play-actin' woman."

"You'd have lots to do," continued Aunt Matilda, "goin' to see a woman what ain't seen fit to return a call your Aunt made on her more'n five years ago."

"Humph!" Grandmother snorted.

"The very idea," exclaimed Aunt Matilda.

What had seemed to Rosemary like an open path had merely led to an insurmountable stone wall. She shrugged her shoulders good-humouredly. "Very well," she said, "I'm sure I don't care. Suit yourselves."

One Step Forward

She began to clear away the supper dishes, for, though the others had eaten little, they had apparently finished. Out in the kitchen, she sang as she worked, and only a close observer would have detected a tremor in the sweet, untrained soprano. "Anyway," thought Rosemary, "I'll put on the flat-irons."

The fire she had built would not go out for some hours. She had used coal ruinously in order to heat the oven for a special sort of tea-biscuit of which Grandmother was very fond. While the fire was going out, it would heat the irons, and then---"One step forward whenever there is a foothold," she said to herself, "and trust to God for the next."

That night, as fortune would have it, Grandmother and Aunt Matilda elected to sit up late, solving a puzzle in The Household Guardian for which a Mission rocker was offered as a prize. It was long past ten o'clock when they gave it up.

"I dunno," yawned Aunt Matilda, "as I'm partial to rockers."

"Leastways," continued Grandmother, rising to put her spectacles on the mantel, "to the kind they give missionaries. I've seen the things they send missionaries more'n once, in my time."