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“Here I be!” she called in a thick, gurgling voice, as Amelia hastened out, her apron thrown over her head. “Didn’t expect me, did ye? Nobody looks for an old rheumatic creatur’. She’s more out o’ the runnin’ ‘n a last year’s bird’s-nest.”

“Why, aunt Ann!” cried Amelia, in unmistakable joy. “I’m tickled to death to see you. Here, Amos, I’ll help get her out.”

The driver, a short, thick-set man of neutral, ashy tints and a sprinkling of hair and beard, trudged round the oxen and drew the rocking-chair forward without a word. He never once looked in Amelia’s direction, and she seemed not to expect it; but he had scarcely laid hold of the chair when aunt Ann broke forth:–

“Now, Amos, ain’t you goin’ to take no notice of ‘Melia, no more’n if she wa’n’t here? She ain’t a bump on a log, nor you a born fool”

Amos at once relinquished his sway over the chair, and stood looking abstractedly at the oxen, who, with their heads low, had already fallen into that species of day-dream whereby they compensate themselves for human tyranny. They were waiting for Amos, and Amos, in obedience to some inward resolve, waited for commotion to cease.

“If ever I was ashamed, I be now!” continued aunt Ann, still with an expression of settled good-nature, and in a voice all jollity though raised conscientiously to a scolding pitch. “To think I should bring such a creatur’ into the world, an’ set by to see him treat his own relations like the dirt under his feet!”

Amelia laughed. She was exhilarated by the prospect of company, and this domestic whirlpool had amused her from of old.

“Law, aunt Ann,” she said, “you let Amos alone. He and I are old cronies. We understand one another. Here, Amos, catch hold! We shall all get our deaths out here, if we don’t do nothin’ but stand still and squabble.”

The immovable Amos had only been awaiting his cue. He lifted the laden chair with perfect ease to one of the piazza steps, and then to another; when it had reached the top-most level, he dragged it over the sill into the kitchen, and, leaving his mother sitting in colossal triumph by the fire, turned about and took his silent way to the outer world.

“Amos,” called aunt Ann, “do you mean to say you’re goin’ to walk out o’ this house without speakin’ a civil word to anybody? Do you mean to say that?”

“I don’t mean to say nothin’,” confided Amos to his worsted muffler, as he took up his goad, and began backing the oxen round.

Undisturbed and not at all daunted by a reply for which she had not even listened, aunt Ann raised her voice in cheerful response: “Well, you be along ‘tween three an’ four, an’ you’ll find me ready.”

“Mercy, aunt Ann!” said Amelia, beginning to unwind the visitor’s wraps, “what makes you keep houndin’ Amos that way? If he hasn’t spoke for thirty-five years, it ain’t likely he’s goin’ to begin now.”

Aunt Ann was looking about her with an expression of beaming delight in unfamiliar surroundings. She laughed a rich, unctuous laugh, and stretched her hands to the blaze.

“Law,” she said contentedly, “of course it ain’t goin’ to do no good. Who ever thought ‘t would? But I’ve been at that boy all these years to make him like other folks, an’ I ain’t goin’ to stop now. He never shall say his own mother didn’t know her duty towards him. Well, ‘Melia, you air kind o’ snug here, arter all! Here, you hand me my bag, an’ I’ll knit a stitch. I ain’t a mite cold.”

Amelia was bustling about the fire, her mind full of the possibilities of a company dinner.

“How’s your limbs?” she asked, while aunt Ann drew out a long stocking, and began to knit with an amazing rapidity of which her fat fingers gave no promise.