Aunt Hannah crossed the porch once or twice on her way to the milk-room, and at each time uncle Nat ceased whittling and gazed wistfully after her. Once he parted his lips to speak, but that moment Salina came to the kitchen door with a quantity of apple-parings gathered up in her apron, and called out, "Miss Hannah, do come along with that colander, the pumpkin sarse will be biled dry as a chip—where on arth is Mary Fuller?"
"Here," answered Mary, in a low voice, coming down from her chamber.
Had Salina looked up she might have seen that Mary's eyes were heavy and moist, as if she had been weeping, but the strong-minded maiden had emptied her apron, and sat with a large earthen bowl in her lap, beating a dozen eggs tempestuously together, as if they had given her mortal offence, and she were taking revenge with every dash of her hand.
"Throw a stick or two of wood into the oven, Mary, that's a good girl, then take these eggs and beat them like all possessed, while I roll out the gingerbread and cut some brake leaves in the pie crust. Aunt Hannah now always will cut the leaves all the way of a size, as if any one with half an eye couldn't see that it isn't the way they grow by nature, but broad at the bottom and tapering off like an Injun arrow at the top. Besides, Mary, it's between us, you know, aunt Hannah never does make her thumb-marks even about the edges, but Nathan, now I dare say, don't know the difference between her work, and a leaf like that."
Salina had resigned her bowl while speaking, and was now lifting up the transparent upper crust of a pie, where she had cut a leaf, through which the light gleamed as if it had been lace-work.
"Look a-there, now, Mary Fuller, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he never noticed the difference between this and that outlandish concern;" here Salina pointed, with a grim smile, to a neatly-covered pie which aunt Hannah had left ready for the oven, and added, with a profound shake of the head, which arose from that want of appreciation which is said to be the hunger of genius, "there's no use of exerting one's self when nobody seems to mind it."
With these words Salina spread down the crust of her pie, and lifting the platter on one hand cut around it with a flourish of the case-knife, and began a pinching the edges with a determined pressure of the lips, as if she had quite made up her mind that every indentation of her thumb should leave its fellow on uncle Nat's insensible heart.
"There," she said, pushing the pie against that of aunt Hannah's, "see if any one knows the difference between that and that—I know they won't—there now!"
This was said with a dash of defiance, as if she expected Mary to contradict her, but the young girl sat languidly beating the eggs, lost in thought; something very sad seemed to have come over her.
"Humph?" said Salina, snuffing the air, "what's the use talking!" and seizing the rolling-pin, she began with both hands to press out a flat of gingerbread, and proceeded to cut it up into square cards, which she marked in stripes with the back of her knife. Just then aunt Hannah came from the out-room rapidly, and with a strange look in her usually cold eyes.