Followed days of rarest bliss for Martha, when she could marshal out her
small forces, setting each his particular task, and seeing it was done
with thoroughness and despatch, so that in an inconceivably short time
her new home shone with all the spotless cleanliness of the old, and
added comeliness beside.
"Ain't it the little palace?" she inquired, when all was finished. "I
wouldn't change my lodge for the great house, grand as it is, not for
anything you could offer me! Nor I wouldn't call the queen my cousin now
we're all in it together. I'm feelin' that joyful I'd like to have what
they calls a house-swarmin', only there ain't, by the looks of it, any
neighbors much, to swarm."
"No," said Ma regretfully, "I noticed there ain't no neighbors--to speak
of."
"Well, then, we can't speak o' them," returned Martha. "Which will save
us from fallin' under God's wrath as gossips. There's never any great
loss without some small gain."
"But we must have some sort of jollification," Claire insisted. "Doesn't
your wedding-day--the anniversary of it, I mean--come 'round about this
time? You said the Fourth, didn't you?"
Martha nodded.
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