“Well,” continued Aunt Hitty, after an aggravating pause, “the woman that lives in that house has been burnt.”

Araminta gasped.  “Oh, Aunt Hitty, was she bad?  What did she do and how did she get burned before she was dead?”

Miss Mehitable brushed aside the question as though it were an annoying fly.  “I don’t want it talked of,” she said, severely.  “Evelina Grey was a friend of mine, and she is yet.  If there’s anything on earth I despise, it’s a gossip.  People who haven’t anything better to do than to go around prying into other folks’s affairs are better off dead, I take it.  My mother never permitted me to gossip, and I’ve held true to her teachin’.”  Aunt Hitty smoothed her skirts with superior virtue and tied a knot in her thread.

“How did she get burned?” asked Araminta, eagerly.

“Gossip,” said Miss Mehitable, sententiously, “does a lot of harm and makes a lot of folks miserable.  It’s a good thing to keep away from, and if I ever hear of your gossiping about anybody, I’ll shut you up in your room for two weeks and keep you on bread and water.”

Araminta trembled.  “What is gossiping, Aunt Hitty?” she asked in a timid, awe-struck tone.

“Talking about folks,” explained Miss Hitty.  “Tellin’ things about ’em they wouldn’t tell themselves.”

It occurred to Araminta that much of the conversation at the crossroads might appropriately be classed under that head, but, of course, Aunt Hitty knew what she was talking about.  She remembered the last quilting Aunt Hitty had given, when the Ladies’ Aid Society had been invited, en masse, to finish off the quilt Araminta’s rebellious fingers had just completed.  One of the ladies had been obliged to leave earlier than the rest, and——­

“I don’t believe,” thought Araminta, “that Mrs. Gardner would have told how her son ran away from home, nor that she didn’t dust her bed slats except at house-cleaning time, nor that they ate things other people would give to the pigs.”

“I expect there’ll be a lot of questions asked about Evelina,” observed Miss Mehitable, breaking in rudely upon Araminta’s train of thought, “as soon ’s folks finds out she’s come back to live here, and that she has to wear a veil all the time, even when she doesn’t wear her hat.  What I’m telling you for is to show you what happens to women that haven’t sense enough to keep away from men.  If Evelina ’d kept away from Doctor Dexter, she wouldn’t have got burnt.”

“Did Doctor Dexter burn her?” asked Araminta, breathlessly.  “I thought it was God.”

At the psychological moment, Doctor Dexter drove by, bowing to Miss Mehitable as he passed.  Araminta had observed that this particular event always flustered her aunt.

“Maybe, it was God and maybe it was Doctor Dexter,” answered Miss Mehitable, quickly.  “That’s something there don’t nobody know except Evelina and Doctor Dexter, and it’s not for me to ask either one of ‘em, though I don’t doubt some of the sewin’ society ’ll make an errand to Evelina’s to find out.  I’ve got to keep ’em off ’n her, if I can, and that’s a big job for one woman to tackle.