"There is no smoke here, surely."
"I smell it. I can smell anything there is about. I don't know whatever there was in the house last night that smelled like coffee; but I a'most thought there was somebody makin' it down-stairs. I smelled it as plain as could be. If I could ha' got into my shoes, I believe I would ha' come down to see, just to get rid of the notion, it worried me so. It beats me now, what it could ha' been."
Diana turned away with the cups she had been wiping, that she might not show her face.
"Don't you never have your ashes took up, Diana?" cried Mrs. Starling, who, when much exercised on household matters, sometimes forgot her grammar.
"Yes, mother."
"When did you have 'em took up in this chimney?"
"I do not remember—yesterday, I guess," said Diana vaguely.
"You never burnt all the ashes there is there since yesterday morning. You'd have had to sit up all night to do it; and burn a good lot o' wood on your fire, too."
"Mother," exclaimed Diana in desperation, "I don't suppose everything is just as it would be if you'd been round all these days."
"I guess it ain't," said Mrs. Starling. "There's where you are wanting, Diana. Your hands are good enough, but I wouldn't give much for your eyes. There's where you'd grow poor, if you weren't poor a'ready. Now you didn't know when that pane o' glass was broke. You'd go round and round, and a pane o' glass'd knock out here, and a quart of oil 'ud leak out there, and you'd lose a pound of flour between the sieve and the barrel, and you'd never know how or where."