FROM DAWN TO DAYLIGHT.
IT was by the light of the blinking tallow candle that they made their toilets next morning. Louise roused suddenly, not a little startled at what she supposed were unusual sounds, issuing from all portions of the house, in the middle of the night.
"Do you suppose any one is sick?" she asked her husband. "There has been a banging of doors and a good deal of hurrying around for some minutes."
"Oh no," he said, reassuringly. "It is getting-up time. John is a noisy fellow, and Dorothy can make considerable noise when she undertakes. I suspect they are trying to rouse us."
"Getting-up time! why, it must be in the middle of the night."
"That depends on whether one lives in town or in the country. I shouldn't be greatly surprised if breakfast were waiting for us."
"Then let us hurry," said Louise, making a motion to do so; but her husband remanded her back to her pillow, while he made vigorous efforts to conquer the old-fashioned stove, and secure some warmth.
"But we ought not to keep them waiting breakfast," Louise said in dismay. "That is very disagreeable when everything is ready to serve. We have been annoyed in that way ourselves. Lewis, why didn't you waken me before? Haven't you heard the sounds of life for a good while?"
"Yes," said Lewis, "longer than I wanted to hear them. If they don't want breakfast to wait they shouldn't get it ready at such an unearthly hour. There is no sense in rousing up the household in the night. During the busy season it is a sort of necessity, and I always succumb to it meekly. But at this date it is just the outgrowth of a notion, and I have waged a sort of silent war on it for some time. I suppose I have eaten cold breakfasts about half the time this autumn."
"Cold breakfasts! Didn't your mother keep something warm for you?"