All the dead and buried crimes of the small boys of the village were excavated from the past and charged to Ralph Dexter.  Miss Mehitable brought the record fully up to the time he left Rushton for college, having been prepared for entrance by his father.  Then she began with Araminta.

First upon the schedule were Miss Mehitable’s painful emotions when Barbara Smith had married Henry Lee.  She croaked anew all her raven-like prophecies of misfortune which had added excitement to the wedding, and brought forth the birth of Araminta in full proof.  Full details of Barbara’s death were given, and the highly magnified events which had led to her adoption of the child.  Condescending for a moment to speak of the domestic virtues, Miss Mehitable explained, with proper pride, how she had “brought up” Araminta.  The child had been kept close at the side of her guardian angel, never had been to school, had been carefully taught at home, had not been allowed to play with other children; in short, save at extremely rare intervals, Araminta had seen no one unless in the watchful presence of her counsellor.

“And if you don’t think that’s work,” observed Miss Hitty, piously, “you just keep tied to one person for almost nineteen years, day and night, never lettin’ ’em out of your sight, and layin’ the foundation of their manners and morals and education, and see how you’ll feel when a blackmailing sprig of a play-doctor threatens to collect a hundred dollars from you if you dast to nurse your own niece!”

Miss Evelina, silent as always, was moving restlessly about the kitchen.  Unaccustomed since her girlhood to activity of any description, she found her new tasks hard.  Muscles, long unused, ached miserably from exertion.  Yet Araminta had to be taken care of and her room kept clean.

The daily visits of Doctor Ralph, who was almost painfully neat, had made Miss Evelina ashamed of her house, though he had not appeared to notice that anything was wrong.  She avoided him when she could, but it was not always possible, for directions had to be given and reports made.  Miss Evelina never looked at him directly.  One look into his eyes, so like his father’s, had made her so faint that she would have fallen, had not Doctor Ralph steadied her with his strong arm.

To her, he was Anthony Dexter in the days of his youth, though she continually wondered to find it so.  She remembered a story she had read, a long time ago, of a young woman who lost her husband of a few weeks in a singularly pathetic manner.  In exploring a mountain, he fell into a crevasse, and his body could not be recovered.  Scientists calculated that, at the rate the glacier was moving, his body might be expected to appear at the foot of the mountain in about twenty-three years; so, grimly, the young bride set herself to wait.