"That would look poverty-stricken."
"I suppose," said Madge slowly, "that is what we are. It looks like it, just now."
"'The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich,'" Mrs. Armadale said.
"Yes, mother," said Charity; "but our cow died because she was tethered carelessly."
"And our hay failed because there was no rain," Madge added. "And our apples gave out because they killed themselves with bearing last year."
"You forget, child, it is the Lord 'that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season.'"
"But he didn't give it, mother; that's what I'm talking about; neither the former nor the latter; though what that means, I'm sure I don't know; we have it all the year round, most years."
"Then be contented if a year comes when he does not send it."
"Grandmother, it'll do for you to talk; but what are we girls going to do without bonnets?"
"Do without," said Lois archly, with the gleam of her eye and the arch of her pretty brow which used now and then to bewitch poor Tom Caruthers.