"I don't see anything wrong in it," Mrs. Day maintained stoutly. "Jenny's roof would have fallen in on her if she hadn't shingled this fall. It looks like Providence to me."
"He's so slow at it that it looks like courting to me," observed the postmistress while scanning the morning's postcards to see if anything interesting was likely to happen in the neighborhood.
"Alfinso thinks the world of Mr. Holt, and he's getting ten cents a day now. It's true Alfonso takes three of it away from him every night. He says five is due to him because he's a twin, but he only takes three cents because he don't do any work."
"Alfonso's goin' to make a good business man when he grows up," said the post-mistress.
It was half-past four in the afternoon, but in the short December days it was nearly as dark as midnight.
A cheerful fire snapped in Jenny's highly polished kitchen stove. The yellow-painted floor with its braided rugs reflected the light of the kerosene lamp, the cat was asleep in the rocking-chair with the cretonne cushion, and Jenny sat by the table making out a crochet pattern from a magazine in front of her. She had changed into her afternoon dress of brown cashmere with pongee collar and cuffs and apron, so that she looked more than ever like Jenny Wren, Rufus Holt thought, as he came in from the tool-house with a lantern.
"Alfinso is splitting and piling his kindling," he said. "He wants me to wait and go along home with him. Alfonso has told him there's a ghost between here and the corner. Gracious! Can any parlor in the world beat a kitchen for comfort when it's rigged out and kept like yours! (No, puss, I wouldn't have you move for the world, even if you offered to! I'll take a wooden chair!)"
"The cat is spoiled," said Jenny, "and you look tired. You ought not to be doing rough work or you won't get to be yourself again."
"I'm myself, right enough; in fact I never was so much myself since I was born. I'm not tired; the sight of you and this kitchen rests me clean through to the bone."
Jenny changed color, but studied the crochet pattern with renewed care.