It
was kept by two old maids whose hearts had got flattened under the
pressure of poverty--no, I am wrong, it was not poverty, but
_care_; pure poverty never flattened any heart; it is the care
which poverty is supposed to justify that does the mischief; it gets
inside it and burrows, as well as lies on the top of it; of mere outside
poverty a heart can bear a mountainous weight without the smallest
injury, yea with inestimable result of the only riches. Our Lord never
mentions poverty as one of the obstructions to his kingdom, neither has
it ever proved such; riches, cares and desires he does mention. The
sisters Witherspin had never yet suffered from the lack of a single
necessary; not the less they frayed their mornings, wore out their
afternoons, scorched their evenings, and consumed their nights, in
scraping together provision for an old age they were destined never to
see. They were a small meager pair, with hardly a smile between them.
One waited and the other cooked. The one that waited had generally her
chin tied up with a silk handkerchief, as if she had come to life again,
but not quite, and could not do without the handkerchief.
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