When you sit down you can look out between the starchiest of starchy curtains into the yard, where there is an innumerable busy flock of chickens.  She keeps chickens, and all the important ones are named.  She has one called Martin Luther, another is Josiah Gilbert Holland.  Once she came over to our house with a basket, from one end of which were thrust the sturdy red legs of a pullet.  She informed us that she had brought us one of Evangeline’s daughters.

But I am getting out of the house before I am fairly well into it.  The sitting-room expresses Miss Aiken; but not so well, somehow, as the immaculate bedroom beyond, into which, upon one occasion, I was permitted to steal a modest glimpse.  It was of an incomparable neatness and order, all hung about—­or so it seemed to me—­with white starchy things, and ornamented with bright (but inexpensive) nothings.  In this wonderful bedroom there is a secret and sacred drawer into which, once in her life, Harriet had a glimpse.  It contains the clothes, all gently folded, exhaling an odour of lavender, in which our friend will appear when she has closed her eyes to open them no more upon this earth.  In such calm readiness she awaits her time.

Upon the bureau in this sacred apartment stands a small rosewood box, which is locked, into which no one in our neighbourhood has had so much as a single peep.  I should not dare, of course, to speculate upon its contents; perhaps an old letter or two, “a ring and a rose,” a ribbon that is more than a ribbon, a picture that is more than art.  Who can tell?  As I passed that way I fancied I could distinguish a faint, mysterious odour which I associated with the rosewood box:  an old-fashioned odour composed of many simples.

On the stand near the head of the bed and close to the candlestick is a Bible—­a little, familiar, daily Bible, very different indeed from the portentous and imposing family Bible which reposes on the centre-table in the front room, which is never opened except to record a death.  It has been well worn, this small nightly Bible, by much handling.  Is there a care or a trouble in this world, here is the sure talisman.  She seeks (and finds) the inspired text.  Wherever she opens the book she seizes the first words her eyes fall upon as a prophetic message to her.  Then she goes forth like some David with his sling, so panoplied with courage that she is daunted by no Goliath of the Philistines.  Also she has a worshipfulness of all ministers.  Sometimes when the Scotch Preacher comes to tea and remarks that her pudding is good, I firmly believe that she interprets the words into a spiritual message for her.