"How do you do, Mr. Hotchkiss? May I come and warm myself? I have been out, and I am half-frozen."
"I guess you're welcome to most anything in this house, ma'am,—and fire we wouldn't grudge to anybody. Sit down, ma'am;" and he set a chair for her. "It's pretty tight weather."
"We had nothing like this last winter," said Mrs. Barclay, shivering.
"We expect to hev one or two snaps in the course of the winter," said Mr. Hotchkiss. "Shampuashuh ain't what you call a cold place; but we expect to see them two snaps. It comes seasonable this time. I'd rayther hev it now than in March. My sister—that's gone,—she could always tell you how the weather was goin' to be. I've never seen no one like her for that."
"Nor for some other things," said Mrs. Barclay. "It is a sad change to feel her place empty."
"Ay," said uncle Tim, with a glance at the unused chair,—"it's the difference between full and empty. 'I went out full, and the Lord has brought me back empty', Ruth's mother-in-law said."
"Who is Ruth?" Mrs. Barclay asked, a little bewildered, and willing to change the subject; for she noticed a suppressed quiver in the hard features. "Do I know her?"
"I mean Ruth the Moabitess. Of course you know her. She was a poor heathen thing, but she got all right at last. It was her mother-in-law that was bitter. Well—troubles hadn't ought to make us bitter. I guess there's allays somethin' wrong when they do."
"Hard to help it, sometimes," said Mrs. Barclay.
"She wouldn't ha' let you say that," said the old man, indicating sufficiently by his accent of whom he was speaking. "There warn't no bitterness in her; and she had seen trouble enough! She's out o' it now."