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First Aunt Nabby gets up in the morning and examines the sink, to see whether it leaks and rots the beam. She then makes a little fire, gets her little teapot of bright shining tin, and puts into it a teaspoonful of black tea, and so prepares her breakfast.
Ann went to look, indeed that was the way she smuggled the thief's dinner to him, but her report of nothing the matter with the grain did not satisfy Nabby. She had more confidence in Mrs. Polly. But Mrs. Polly did not offer to investigate herself until after supper. They had been very busy that day, washing, and now there was churning to do. Ann sat at the churn, Mrs.
Hard indeed was the storm which could keep a Wales or a Penniman away from meeting. Mrs. Polly Wales' horses were accommodated in this new stable also. In the winter time, there were two of them; one which she and Ann rode, Ann using the pillion, and one for Nabby Porter. Phineas Adams always walked.
So while Aunt Nabby is sitting sipping her tea and munching her bread and butter with a matter-of-fact certainty and marvelous satisfaction, mother goes doubting and reckoning round, like Mrs.
Polly was cutting up apples for pies; and Nabby was washing dishes, when the rats and mice smote her deaf ears again. "I knew I heerd 'em then," she said; "I don't believe but what them grain-chists is full of 'em." "I am going to look," quoth Mrs. Polly then, in a tone of decision, and straightway she rose and got a candle. Ann's heart beat terribly.
Jane had come out in the kitchen, so Betty could go on with her dinner preparations. "Mother thinks of keeping Cousin Nabby all winter. She likes Boston so, and it's lonely up in New Hampshire on the farm. That will ease me up wonderfully." "If I go away mother will have to get someone." "Although they do not think we young people are of much account," laughed Jane.
"O, oh!" she screamed. Back rushed Mrs. Polly and Nabby, and that ended the rat-hunt for that night. The waste of all that beautiful cream was all Mrs. Polly could think of prudent housewife that she was. So in the night, when the moon was up, and the others were sound asleep, Ann assisted her thief safely out of the grain-chest and out of the house.
"I must go up there and look," said Mrs. Polly. "They did considerable mischief, last year." Ann turned pale; what if she should take it into her head to look that day! She watched her chance very narrowly for the hot mush; and after breakfast she caught a minute, when Phineas had gone to work, and Mrs. Polly was in the pantry, and Nabby down cellar.
"Ann," said she, "come here, I want to speak to you." Nabby stared wonderingly; and Ann, as she obeyed, felt awed. There was something unusual in her mistress's tone. Standing there in the fore-room, in the august company of the best bed, with its high posts and flowered-chintz curtains, the best chest of drawers, and the best chairs, Ann listened to what Mrs. Polly had to tell her.
Often the sturdy young blacksmith was at the meeting-house, before the women, and waiting to take their horses. One Sunday, the winter after the Horse-House was built, Mrs. Polly, Ann, Phineas, and Nabby went to meeting as usual. It was a very cold, bleak day; the wind blew in through the slight wooden walls of the old meeting-house, and the snow lay in little heaps here and there.
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