Mis' Viny, balancing on the window ledge to reach for eggs, looked back at us.
"Friendship's so comfortable that way," she said, "I don't see how you can get up much of anything."
And little Miss Lucy, kneeling on the floor of the cellar to measure more feed, said without looking up:—
"You know, since mother died we ain't never done anything for holidays. No—we can't seem to want to think about Thanksgiving or Christmas or like that."
They all turned their grave lined faces toward us.
"We want to let the holidays just slip by without noticin'," Miss Viny told us. "Seems like it hurts less that way."
Libbie Liberty smiled wanly.
"Don't you know," she said, "when you hold your hand still in hot water, you don't feel how hot the water really is? But when you move around in it some, it begins to burn you. Well, when we let Thanksgiving an' Christmas alone, it ain't so bad. But when we start to move around in 'em—"
Her voice faltered and stopped.
"We miss mother terrible," Miss Lucy said simply.