Well, after I was in bed I began to remember all that had happened lately.  Somehow my thoughts went back to the first time Cousin Stephen came to our place, when I was a real little girl, and mother’d sent me to the well and I had dropped the bucket in, and he ran straight down the green slippery stones and brought it up, laughing.  Then I remembered how we’d birds-nested together, and nutted, and come home on the hay-carts, and how we’d been in every kind of fun and danger together; and how, when my new Portsmouth lawn took fire, at Martha Smith’s apple-paring, he caught me right in his arms and squeezed out the fire with his own hands; and how, when he saw once I had a notion of going with Elder Hooper’s son James, he stepped aside till I saw what a nincom Jim Hooper was, and then he appeared as if nothing had happened, and was just as good as ever; and how, when the ice broke on Deacon Smith’s pond, and I fell in, and the other boys were all afraid, Steve came and saved my life again at risk of his own; and how he always seemed to think the earth wasn’t good enough for me to walk on; and how I’d wished, time and again, I might have some way to pay him back; and here it was, and I’d failed him.  Then I remembered how I’d been to his place in Berkshire,—­a rich old farm, with an orchard that smelled like the Spice Islands in the geography, with apples and pears and quinces and peaches and cherries and plums,—­and how Stephen’s mother, Aunt Emeline, had been as kind to me as one’s own mother could be.  But now Aunt Emeline and Uncle ’Siah were dead, and Stephen came a good deal oftener over the border than he’d any right to.  Today, he brought some of those new red-streaks, and wanted mother to try them; next time, they’d made a lot more maple-sugar on his place than he wanted; and next time, he thought mother’s corn might need hoeing, or it was fine weather to get the grass in:  I don’t know what we should have done without him.  Then I thought how Stephen looked, the day he was pall-bearer to Charles Payson, who was killed sudden by a fall,—­so solemn and pale, nowise craven, but just up to the occasion, so that, when the other girls burst out crying at sight of the coffin and at thought of Charlie, I cried, too,—­but it was only because Stephen looked so beautiful.  Then I remembered how he looked the other day when he came, his cheeks were so red with the wind, and his hair, those bright curls, was all blown about, and he laughed with the great hazel eyes he has, and showed his white teeth;—­and now his beauty would be spoiled, and he’d never care for me again, seeing I hadn’t cared for him.  And the wind began to come up; and it was so lonesome and desolate in that little bed-room down-stairs, I felt as if we were all buried alive; and I couldn’t get to sleep; and when the sleet and snow began to rattle on the pane, I thought there wasn’t any one to see me and I’d better cry to keep it company; and so I sobbed off to dreaming at last, and woke at sunrise and found it still snowing.