Miranda had drawn the younger boy to her side. She was chafing his numb hands and smoothing the damp locks from his forehead.
"Why, how cold your hands have grown!" the child cried. "They're colder than mine. And how funny and white you look!"
Miranda had felt, from the moment when she first saw the forlorn little group, that Ephraim was dead, and yet the sure knowledge came as a shock. But this child was looking at her with Ephraim's eyes: they warmed her heart.
"She knew me, if none of the rest of you did," said the widow, indicating Miranda by a nod of her head. "And I knew her, too, just as soon as I set eyes on her.—Well, you needn't hold any grudge against me, Miranda Daggett. I calculate you got the best of the bargain. Ephrum hadn't any faculty to get along. I've struggled and slaved till I'm all worn out; and now I haven't a roof to cover me nor my children, nor a mouthful to eat."
Miranda sprang up, her arms around both the boys.
"I have! I have plenty for you all. And I've been a-wonderin' why it should have come to me, that didn't need it; but now I know. You come right home with me.—Mis' Bemis, you'll let Tready harness up?"
There were some objections made on account of the rain, but Miranda overruled them all.
She drew Mrs. Bemis aside and confided to her that she didn't want Ephrum's boys to stay even one night in the poor-house, because "it might stick to 'em afterwards." And she shouldn't really feel that they were going to belong to her until she had them in her own house.
So, through the driving rain, in the open wagon which was the most luxurious equipage that the poor-farm boasted, Miranda was driven home with her protégés; while Mrs. Bemis gave way to renewed anxiety about the fall tailorin' and Dr. Pingree heaved a sigh over his vanished dreams,—a very gentle one, he was so used to seeing dreams vanish; and there was consolation in having such an event to talk over.
Miranda's home was a rambling old house, and it seemed deserted and ghostly when they entered it; but Miranda kindled a fire In the kitchen stove and another in the great fireplace in the sitting-room, and the boys, warmed and fed and comforted, grew hilarious, and the ghosts were all dispersed, and it seemed to Miranda for the first time like home.