"Miss Plunkett; that's a name I know. I have heard my mother mention a
Captain Plunkett she knew as a girl; they were a good family, the
Plunketts. Then you know them?"

Sara spoke of the life-long friendship between that family and her own, but in so modest a way that the lady's respect for her increased with every word; but both were too intent on business to give much time to genealogy.

Sara proved an apt learner, and soon was making the treadle fly, while her hostess, seeing her well underway, ran down-stairs for a time. When she came back Sara had performed the cunning task of getting the pockets in place, and was finishing off the long seams.

"How rapidly you work!" cried her new friend. "My husband told me how business-like you were."

"Did he say so? I'm glad he thinks I am!" cried Sara, much pleased. "It would be so annoying to a man like him if I were not."

"And why to him especially, Miss Olmstead?" asked the wife curiously.

"Because he is absorbed in his work, and cares for nothing outside. In fact, one always is with that work," enthusiastically; "it takes your whole being for the time."

"Yet the last girl he had was a dreadful little idler, and would interrupt him in the midst of his most interesting researches to ask the silliest questions."

Sara shook her head mournfully. "I don't see how she could!"

"Well, to tell the truth," bending forward confidentially, "isn't it awfully dry and uninteresting? There! I wouldn't dare lisp it before my husband, but isn't there a good deal of—of—well, humbug, about it?"