"Make a mark on me with your white pencil," she would say, offering her
dark cheek to Reuby, who would scrawl hieroglyphics all over it from hair
to chin.

Then she would invite the whole troop out into the kitchen to a feast of
doughnuts or cookies; very long the recesses sometimes were when the
school was watching Hannah fry the fantastic shapes of sweet dough, or
taking each a turn at the jagged wheel with which she cut them out.

Reuben also came often to the school-room, and Jane sometimes sat there
with her knitting. A strange content had settled on their lives, in spite
of the sorrow. They saw Draxy calm; she smiled on them as constantly as
ever; and they were very old people, and believed too easily that she was
at peace.

But the Lord had more work still for this sweet woman's hand. This, too,
was suddenly set before her. Late one Saturday afternoon, as she was
returning, surrounded by her escort of laughing children, from the woods,
where they had been for May-flowers, old Deacon Plummer overtook her.

"Mis' Kinney, Mis' Kinney," he began several times, but could get no
further. He was evidently in great perplexity how to say the thing he
wished.

"Mis' Kinney, would you hev--

"Mis' Kinney, me and Deacon Swift's been a sayin'--

"Mis' Kinney, ain't you got--"