"I don't believe it'll rain long, and I do want to get to Cleveland to-night."

"Get to Cleveland!" said Cousin Will. "Nonsense, don't be silly. We can't go on in the rain —that's flat. I guess the farmer knows more about the weather than you."

With a sigh, which came near being a sob, Nimpo turned away, and slowly began to take off her bonnet.

"Come into the other room," said the woman kindly, "and take off your things."

She opened a door, and Nimpo followed her in.

CHAPTER XXV.

A NIGHT IN THE FARM-HOUSE.

THE other room was smaller than the kitchen, and there were two beds in it. They were great, fat, cushiony looking beds, with full white valance hanging to the floor, covered with patchwork quilts of wonderful patterns, and having two slinky looking pillows on each.

The posts of the bedsteads ran up nearly to the wall, and on them was a frame from which hung long white curtains, full enough to completely surround the beds, when drawn.

As for other furniture, there was little. Between the windows there was a square stand with two leaves to turn up, on which lay a newspaper and three books. A wooden rocking chair with a high feather cushion in it, another wooden chair or two, and a strip of rag carpeting in front of the

beds completed the assortment. Oh! I forgot two astonishing pictures, one of which was "Daniel in the Lion's Den," dressed in red coat and blue pantaloons, and the other "Abraham and Isaac "-in the same style of art.

All this Nimpo took in in one look, while the woman patted up the pillows, and changed the place of a chair or two.

"Now take your things right off, and make yourself to home," said she kindly. "I know it seems rather strange like at first, but I've got a daughter myself only a bit older than you, and I'll take good care of you. Lay your things on this bed here, and when you like you can come out into the kitchen. Is that young man your brother?"

"No, he's my cousin," said Nimpo.

"Oh! Well, come out when you get ready, I must get my dinner going," and she went out.

Nimpo threw off her bonnet and shawl, and took a good look at the droll things which that room held. After looking at the pictures awhile, she puzzled herself over the pattern of the patch

work quilts, and then turned to the window, where a stiff green paper curtain was rolled half way up, and tied with a piece of tape. She looked out,-nothing but rain, rain, a dreary line of rail fence, the deserted road,-nothing else.

Then she turned to the stand, to see what she could find to read. The newspaper was an old number of the "New York Observer," yellow and ragged with age; of the books, one was the Bible, the second "Baxter's Saint's Rest."

Nimpo opened it, and turned over the leaves.

"It looks dry," she said, shutting it up, and taking up the third. That was "Pilgrim's Progress," and though Nimpo had read that interesting story a dozen times she clung to it as a last hope of being entertained. Sitting down in the rocking chair, she opened the book and began to read.

Now when Nimpo took a book, you might turn the house upside down, and unless you disturbed her she would not know it. She sat there and rocked, and read, till the kitchen door opened softly, a head was put in, quickly followed by

a body-as the farmer's wife saw what she was

doing.

66

Why, du tell! you been reading all this time? I thought you was taking a nap. Here's dinner smoking on the table, and your cousin asking for you."

Nimpo closed the book, and followed her out.

"Wall, she wa'n't asleep after all,-reading a book, for all the world like my 'Mandy. She'd sit from morning to night, and read, and read."

"What did you find so interesting?" asked the farmer pleasantly, as Nimpo took the seat pointed out to her.

"Only 'Pilgrim's Progress,"" said Nimpo. "I've read it before, but I like it.”

"So do I," said the man, "once in awhile of a Sunday, but I'm getting too old to read much.”

Nimpo looked at him with pity, and wondered what pleasure life could have, when one was too old to read. But soon she was attracted to the extraordinary meal before her.

In a big dish before the farmer, was a monstrous piece of boiled beef, surrounded by pota