Page:Milady at Arms (1937).pdf/22

 ment at Orange; and how could Sally pass through to get to her room without being detected? She glanced down dismally at her torn frock. Oh, how Mistress Todd would scold were the minister to behold her thus! And yet the clean gown hanging neatly upon its peg in her room at the head of the stairs might as well have been hanging in New York Town for all its use to Sally!

She opened the door a crack and peeped into the big kitchen. In a straight line she could see Mistress Todd, occupying in her usual nervous fashion a straight ladder-backed chair, with one foot vigorously applied to a cradle rocker, for the baby was sick and fretting from his teeth, and her eyes fixed anxiously upon the door of the Dutch oven where her bread was baking. Between her mother and the buttery door sat Mary, a quiet, good child working upon a quaint sampler with precocious little fingers. Somewhere in the room, beyond Sally's vision, probably near the other door to catch any stray breeze that might come along, to offset the fierce heat of the baking oven, sat the minister. Sally could hear his deep voice with a silence every now and then punctuating his remarks when he raised the silver flagon to his lips.

Sally leaned in discouragement against a rude pine table used as a shelf for the pans of milk in winter time, but now occupied only by some sticks of charcoal with which Mary had been playing that