“I hain’t a’ object of charity,” she said.  “If I go, I ’ll pay my way.  I got something laid by still from my weaving days.  But it has come on me too sudden’; I feel all lost; I will have to study a heap before, I can make up my mind.”  She moved her hands about before her in a dazed, helpless way.

During the rest of the visit she was silent and distraught.  Twice at dinner her shaking hands knocked over her coffee-cup, and once the sorghum-pitcher, little fair-haired Evy cleaning up quietly after her granny, and placing things to her hand so deftly and furtively that she did not know it was done at all, while on her other side sat Marthy, ever kind, solicitous, and patient, and at the far end of the table John vied with her in unobtrusive but loving attentions to “maw.”  Never had “the women” seen an elderly or afflicted person more tenderly and devotedly cared for.  But the object of it all sat rigid, self-absorbed, frowning, as oblivious to the light and warmth of love as to the light of day, her sole remarks being contemptuous apologies for Marthy’s cooking, and complaints of the hardship of having to “gum it,” or eat without teeth.

One week later there was a call from the road in front of the school hospital, and Miss Shippen was pleased and relieved to see Aunt Dalmanutha mounted on a nag behind John.  In her black calico sunbonnet and dress, and long, drab apron, with her hand tightly clutched to John’s arm, and dark apprehension written upon her blind face, she was indeed a pitiable sight.

“I have pondered your words,” she said to Miss Shippen, “and have made up my mind to foller them.  With naught but them to swing out on, I am setting forth into the unknown.  I that hain’t never so much as rid in a wagon, am about to dare the perils of the railroad; that hain’t been twenty mile’ from home in all my days, am journeying into a far and absent country, from which the liabilities are I won’t never return.  Far’well, if far’well it be!”

On the last day of October, Miss Shippen had just dismissed her seventh-grade class in home-nursing, and was standing in the hospital porch drinking in the unspeakable autumnal glory of the mountains, when a wagon, rumbling and groaning along the road and filled with people, stopped with a lurch at the gate.  Advancing, the nurse was at first puzzled as to the identity of the people; then she recognized the faces of John and Marthy Holt and of little Evy.  But for several seconds she gazed without recognition at the striking figure on the front seat beside John.  This figure wore a remarkable hat, bristling with red, yellow, and green flowers, and a plaid silk waist in which every color of the rainbow fought with every other.  Her bright and piercing dark eyes traveled hungrily and searchingly over the countenance of the trained nurse; her lips opened gradually over teeth of dazzling whiteness and newness.  Then, leaning swiftly from the wagon, she gathered the nurse into a powerful, bear-like hug, exclaiming, with solemn joy: