“Perhaps it only seems: best to think that.”
At the cabin-door Dorothy came out smiling, the little, red pocket-copy of “Macbeth” in her hand.
“Now this is right good of you, Miss Anne,” she said. “Come in. Mrs. Lyndsay was telling me last week you like a cup of tea about sundown. It’s a bit early, but you might be tired. I’ve got the tea Mrs. Lyndsay sent me last year.”
“I would like a cup, Dorothy. How is Hiram? and the cows? and the chickens? and Sambo, the cat?”
“They’re all well—the whole family.”
She set the kettle on the fire, got some bread, cut it up, and set it with a supply of butter before Ned.
“No good in asking a boy if he is hungry.”
Ned laughed. “Jack says it is no use for Dick to eat: he is just as hungry when he is done as he was at first.”
“‘It grows by what it feeds on, like the worm i’ the bud,’” said Anne to herself. “I’ll keep that quotation for Archie.” And then, aloud, “We old folks eat from habit. The only appetite I have left is for books, and— What good tea, Dorothy! Thanks! Yes, one cup more. My brother says you like coffee better. I sent to Montreal for a few things you might like. You will find among them a small bag of coffee. We think ours excellent.”
“And I was just last night a-wondering how I could get some right good coffee. It’s half chicory what we get; and here, in you walk, and I’ve got it easy as asking. I haven’t said I’m obliged to you, but I am. Fact is, Miss Anne, giving comes so natural to some folks—you might as well thank them for sneezing. I’m a bit that way myself. I do just think being thanked is the hardest part of giving. If the man in church was to say, ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ every time I dropped a sixpence in his bag, he wouldn’t get another out of me soon.”