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“Why didn’t he put heart into hisself by hangin’ his own gate, before he took sick?” grumbled Abby, reducing Amanda to momentary silence by her pitiless logic.

“Why didn’t he, indeed?” echoed her heart gloomily, receiving nothing in the way of answer from her limited experience of men.

Caleb had spoken more frequently the last few days. When by the combined exertions of the Bensons and the doctor he had been brought down into his mother’s old room, Amanda closed the kitchen door, thinking one experience at a time was enough for a man in his weak and exhausted condition. William Benson couldn’t see any sense in this precaution, but he never did see much sense in what women-folks did. He wanted to show Caleb the new paint and paper immediately, and remark casually that he had done all the work while he was “night-nursin’.”

The next morning Amanda had seized a good opportunity to open the door between the two rooms, straightway retiring to the side entry to await developments. In a few moments she heard Caleb moving, and going in found him half sitting up in bed, leaning on his elbow.

“What’s the matter with the kitchen?” he asked feebly, staring with wide-open eyes at the unaccustomed prospect.

“Only fresh paint an’ paper; that’s William’s work.”

“O God, I ain’t worth it! I ain’t worth it!” he groaned as he hid his face in the pillow.

“Have you been here all the time?” he asked Amanda when she brought him his gruel later in the day.

“Yes, off an’ on, when I could get away from my own work.”

“Who found me?”

“I did. I knew by the looks somethin’ was wrong up here.”

“Somethin’ wrong, sure enough, an’ always was!” Amanda heard him mutter as he turned his face to the wall.

The next day he opened his eyes suddenly as she was passing through the room.

“Did you make that pie William Benson brought me last month?”

“What made you think I did?”

“Oh, I don’t know; it looked, an’ it tasted like one o’ yours,” he said, closing his eyes again. “If you know a woman, you can tell her pie, somehow!”

When had Caleb Kimball ever tasted any of her cooking? A mysterious remark, but everything he said sounded a trifle lightheaded.

His questions came back to her when she was waiting for William Benson at twilight that same day.

Caleb had been sleeping quietly for an hour or more. Amanda was standing at the stove stirring his arrowroot gruel. The kitchen was still.

A smothered “miaow” and the scratching of claws on wood arrested her attention, and she went hurriedly to the door.

“Tristram Dalton; what are you up here for, away from your own home?” she exclaimed.

Tristram vouchsafed no explanation of his appearance, but his demeanor spoke louder than words to Amanda’s guilty conscience, as he walked in.

“No shelter for me but the shed these days!” he seemed to say. “Instead of well-served meals, a cup of milk set here or there!”

He made the circuit of the kitchen discontentedly and finding nothing to his taste went into the adjoining room, and after walking over the full length of Caleb’s prostrate form curled himself up in a hollow at the foot of the bed.

“I’ve neglected him!” thought Amanda; “but his turn’ll come again soon enough,” and she bent her eyes on the gruel.

The blue bowl sat in the pan of hot water on the stove, and she stirred and stirred, slowly, regularly, continuously, in order that the arrowroot should be of a velvety smoothness.

The days were drawing in, and the October sun was setting very yellow, sending a flood of light over her head and shoulders. She wore her afternoon dress of alpaca, with a worked muslin collar and cuffs and a white apron tied round her trim waist. She was one of your wholesome shining women and her bright brown hair glistened like satin.

Caleb’s black eyes looked yearningly at her as she stood there all unconscious, doing one of her innumerable neighborly kindnesses for him.