Holly often interspersed her conversation with various quotations and wise reflections; but the idea of listening at key-holes quite shocked my sense of honor, and I endeavored to remonstrate with her upon the practice.

“It won’t do for you to talk so, Miss Amy,” was her sagacious reply; “you mus’n’t quarrel with the ship that carries you safe over.  If I had not listened at key-holes, you’d never have known what was in them trunks.”

The truth of this remark was quite manifest; and concluding that I was not exactly suited to the character of admonisher, I never renewed the attempt.

Aunt Henshaw had boxes of old letters which she estimated among her greatest valuables; and sometimes, when the sun was shining brightly without, and the soft air of summer waving the trees gently to and fro, the old lady would invite me in a mysterious manner to her room, and drawing forth an almost endless package, open letter after letter, and read to me the correspondence of people whom I cared nothing about.  I tried very hard to suppress all signs of yawning, for I wanted to be out at play; but I must have been ungrateful not to exercise a little patience with one so kind and affectionate, and she, dear old soul! evidently considered it the greatest treat she could offer me.  I became in this manner acquainted with the whole history of her courtship; and charmed with so quiet a listener, she would read to me till I fairly fell asleep.  But her thoughts being entirely occupied with the past, and her eyes in endeavoring to decipher the faded hand-writing, this inattention passed unobserved; and she pursued her reading until called off by her daily duties.

Dear old lady! how often have I watched her when she was asleep, as with the neat white frill of her cap partially shading her face, she sat in the large chair with her hands folded together, and her spectacles lying on the book in her lap.  She looked so pure and calm that I sometimes felt afraid that she might be dead, like old people I had heard of who died quietly in their sleep; but I could not bear the idea, and a feeling of inexpressible relief would come over me when I beheld the lids slowly rise again from the mild eyes that were ever bent lovingly upon me.

She bad a box piled with rolls of manuscript containing poetry, which she told me she had taken great pleasure in composing.  “Saturday nights,” said she, “when everything was in order, and, the next day being Sunday, I had no household cares to think of, I would amuse myself in composing verses that were seldom shown to any one.  Mr. Henshaw was a most excellent man and a kind husband, but he had no taste for poetry, and considered it a great waste of time.  Another thing that helped to set him against it was an unfortunate poem that I composed on the event of a marriage that took place in the neighborhood.  The gentleman had courted the lady for a number of years without success; and after praising