Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/166

 lack of sympathy. However, the minister's wife reassured her with stories of all the other girls from far and near whom he had cured by that same foolish, silly method; so Hannah turned all her energies upon the spinning which a neighbor-woman had set her to do.

Hired workers have been the same from the days of the Psalmist down to our own, and Hannah, putting her whole heart into her work, accomplished, so her surprised employer told her, twice as much spinning as any serving-girl she had ever hired.

"And excellent good thread, too!" she said, examining it.

If Hannah kept up to that, she added, she could have all the work she had time for. She gave the little girl two pennies—two real pennies, the first money Hannah had ever earned. With a head spinning with triumph, she calculated that at that rate she could earn fourpence a day!

She spent a farthing for some fish a little boy brought up from the river, and a halfpenny for some fresh-baked bread, and a part of her precious four-shilling piece for an iron fry-pan, or "spider." Laden with these, she hurried back to see how Ann Mary had endured the old doctor's roughness. She found her sister very tired, but proudly anxious to show a little spot, perhaps six feet square, which she had spaded up with intervals of rest.

"The herb-doctor says that I have done well, and that I will finish the spading in a week, or perhaps even less." she said: "and I like Master Necronsett! He is a good old man, and I know that he will cure me. He makes me feel very rested when he comes near."

Hannah felt a little pang to think that her sister should