“Yes, I’m old.  And you shall read to me out of the Testament before you go.  Hepsie reads to me, but she gets to crying before she’s half through; she can’t find ‘peace,’ she says.”

“I wish she could,” said Marjorie, almost despairingly.

“Now I’ll tell you a story,” began the old voice in a livelier tone.  “I have to talk about more than fifty years ago—­I forget about other things, but I remember when I was young.  I’m glad things happened then, for I can remember them.”

“Didn’t things happen afterward?” asked Marjorie, laughing.

“Not that I remember.”

This afternoon was a pleasant change to Marjorie from housework and study, and she remembered more than once that she was doing something to help pay Hollis for the Holland plate.

“Where shall I begin?” began the dreamy, cracked voice, “as far back as I can remember?”

“As far back as you can,” said Marjorie, eagerly.  “I like old stories best.”

“Maybe I’ll get things mixed up with my mother and grandmother and not know which is me.”

“Rip Van Winkle thought his son was himself,” laughed Marjorie, “but you will think you are your grandmother.”

“I think over the old times so, sitting here in the dark.  Hepsie is no hand to talk much, and Dennis, he’s out most of the time, but bedtime comes soon and I can go to sleep.  I like to have Dennis come in, he never snaps up his old mother as he does Hepsie and other folks.  I don’t like to be in the dark and have it so still, a dog yapping is better than no noise, at all.  I say, ‘Now I lay me’ ever so many times a day to keep me company.”

“You ought to live at our house, we have noisy times; mother and I sing, and father is always humming about his work.  Mr. Holmes is quiet, but Morris is so happy he sings and shouts all day.”

“It used to be noisy enough once, too noisy, when the boys were all making a racket together, and Will made noise enough this time he was home.  He used to read to me and sing songs.  I don’t wonder Hepsie is still and mournful, like.  It’s a changed home to her with the boys away.  My father’s house had noise enough in it; he had six wives.”

“Not all at once,” cried Marjorie alarmed, confounding a hundred years ago with the partriarchal age.

But the old story-teller never heeded interruptions.

“And my marm was the last wife but one.  My father was a hundred years and one day when he died.  I’ve outlived all the children, I guess, for I never hear from none of them—­I most forget who’s dead.  Some of them was married before I was born.  I was the youngest, and I never remember my own mother, but I had a good mother, all the same.”

“You had four step-mothers before you were born,” said Marjorie seriously, “and one own mother and then another step-mother.  Girls don’t have so many step-mothers nowadays.”

“And our house was one story—­a long house, with the eaves most touching the ground and big chimneys at both ends.  It was full of folks.”