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“I’d be ashamed,” announced aunt Ann, after the minister had gone,–“Amos, I would be ashamed, if I couldn’t open my head to a minister o’ the gospel!”

“If one head’s open permanent in a house, I guess that fills the bill,” said Amos, getting up to seek the woodpile. “I ain’t goin’ to interfere with nobody else’s contract.”

His mother looked after him with gaping lips, and, for the space of half an hour, spoke no word.

To-day she saw before her an alluring field of action; the prospect roused within her energies, never incapable of responding to a spur.

“My soul, ‘Melia!” she exclaimed, looking about the kitchen with a dominating eye, “how I should like to git hold o’ this house! I al’ays did have a hankerin’ that way, an’ I don’t mind tellin’ ye. You could change it all round complete.”

“It’s a good house,” said Amelia evasively, taking quick, even stitches, but listening hungrily to the voice of outside temptation. It seemed to confirm all the long-suppressed ambitions of her own heart.

“You ‘re left well on ‘t,” continued aunt Ann, her shrewd blue eyes taking on a speculative look. “I’m glad you sold the stock. A woman never undertakes man’s work but she comes out the little end o’ the horn. The house is enough, if you keep it nice. Now, you’ve got that money laid away, an’ all he left you besides. You could live in the village, if you was a mind to.”

A deep flush struck suddenly into Amelia’s cheek. She thought of Saltash and Laurie Morse.

“I don’t want to live in the village,” she said sharply, thus reproving her own errant mind. “I like my home.”

“Law, yes, of course ye do,” replied aunt Ann easily, returning to her knitting. “I was only spec’latin’. The land, ‘Melia, what you doin’ of? Repairin’ an old coat?”

Amelia bent lower over her sewing. “‘Twas his,” she answered in a voice almost inaudible. “I put a patch on it last night by lamplight, and when daytime come, I found it was purple. So I’m takin’ it off, and puttin’ on a black one to match the stuff.”

“Goin’ to give it away?”

“No, I ain’t,” returned Amelia, again with that sharp, remonstrant note in her voice. “What makes you think I’d do such a thing as that?”

“Law, I didn’t mean no harm. You said you was repairin’ on ‘t,–that’s all.”

Amelia was ashamed of her momentary outbreak. She looked up and smiled sunnily.

“Well, I suppose it is foolish,” she owned,–“too foolish to tell. But I’ve been settin’ all his clothes in order to lay ’em aside at last. I kind o’ like to do it.”

Aunt Ann wagged her head, and ran a knitting-needle up under her cap on a voyage of discovery.

“You think so now,” she said wisely, “but you’ll see some time it’s better by fur to give ’em away while ye can. The time never’ll come when it’s any easier. My soul, ‘Melia, how I should like to git up into your chambers! It’s six year now sence I’ve seen ’em.”

Amelia laid down her work and considered the possibility.

“I don’t know how in the world I could h’ist you up there,” she remarked, from an evident background of hospitable good-will.

“H’ist me up? I guess you couldn’t! You’d need a tackle an’ falls. Amos has had to come to draggin’ me round by degrees, an’ I don’t go off the lower floor. Be them chambers jest the same, ‘Melia?”

“Oh, yes, they’re just the same. Everything is. You know he didn’t like changes.”

“Blue spread on the west room bed?”

“Yes.”

“Spinnin’-wheels out in the shed chamber, where his gran’mother Hooper kep’ ’em?”

“Yes.”

“Say, ‘Melia, do you s’pose that little still’s up attic he used to have such a royal good time with, makin’ essences?”

Amelia’s eyes filled suddenly with hot, unmanageable tears.

“Yes;” she said; “we used it only two summers ago. I come across it yesterday. Seemed as if I could smell the peppermint I brought in for him to pick over. He was too sick to go out much then.”