“I should think so,” interposed Marjorie.

“And Sunday nights we used to sing ‘God of my childhood and my youth.’  Can you sing that?  I wish you’d sing it to me.  I forget what comes next.”

“I never heard of it before; I wish you could remember it all, it’s so pretty.”

“Amzi used to sit next to me and sing—­he was my twin brother—­as loud and clear as a bell.  And when he died they put this on his tombstone: 

“’Come see ye place where I do lie
As you are now so once was I: 
As I be now so you will be,
Prepare for death and follow me.’”

“Oh,” shivered Marjorie, “I don’t like it.  I like a Bible verse better.”

“Isn’t that in the Bible?” she asked, angrily.

“I don’t believe it is.”

“‘Prepare to meet thy God’ is.”

“Yes,” said Marjorie, “that was the text last Sunday.”

“And on father’s tombstone mother put this verse: 

’O, my dear wife, do think of me
  Although we’ve from each other parted,
 O, do prepare to follow me
  Where we shall love forever.’

“I wish I could remember some more.”

“I wish you could,” said Marjorie.  “Didn’t you have all the things we have?  You didn’t have sewing machines.”

“Sewing machines!” returned the old lady, indignantly, “we had our fingers and pins and needles.  But sometimes we couldn’t have pins and had to pin things together with thorns.  How would you like that?”

“I’d rather be born now,” said Marjorie.  “I wouldn’t want to have so many step-mothers as you had, and I’d rather be named Marjorie than Experience.”

“Experience is a good name, and I’d have earned it by this time if my mother hadn’t given it to me,” and the sunken lips puckered themselves into a smile.  “I could tell you some dreadful things, too, but Hepsie won’t like it if I do.  I’ll tell you one, though.  I don’t like to think about the dreadful things myself.  I used to tell them to my boys and they’d coax me to tell them again, about being murdered and such things.  A girl I knew found out after she was married that her husband had killed a peddler, to steal his money to marry her with, and people found it out and he was hanged and she was left a widow!”

“Oh, dear, dear,” exclaimed Marjorie, “have dreadful things been always happening?  Did she die with a broken heart?”

“No, indeed, she was married afterward and had a good husband.  She got through, as people do usually, and then something good happened.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Marjorie, her hazel eyes full of light; “but it was dreadful.”

“And there were robbers in those days.”

“Were there giants, too?”

“I never saw a giant, but I saw robbers once.  The women folks were alone, not even a boy with us, and six robbers came for something to eat and they ransacked the house from garret to cellar; they didn’t hurt us at all, but we were scared, no mistake.  And after they were gone we found out that the baby was gone, Susannah’s little black baby, it had died the day before and mother laid it on a table in the parlor and covered it with a sheet and they had caught it up and ran away with it.”