The next morning, soon after breakfast, I set off for the other end of the street.  Cousin Tryphena saw me coming and opened the door.  She did not smile, and she was still very pale, but I saw that she had regained her self-control, “Come right in,” she said, in rather a tense voice, and, as I entered she added, in our rustic phrase for introduction, “Make you ’quainted with my friend, Mrs. Lindstrom.  She’s come up from the city to stay with me.  And this is her little boy, Sigurd, and this is the baby.”

Blinking somewhat, I shook hands with a small, stoop-shouldered woman, in a new, ready-made dress, with abundant yellow hair drawn back from the thinnest, palest, saddest little face I had ever seen.  She was holding an immaculately clean baby, asleep, its long golden lashes lying on cheeks as white and sunken as her own.  A sturdily built boy of about six scrambled up from where he lay on the floor, playing with the cat, and gave me a hand shyly, hanging down his head.  His mother had glanced up at me with a quick, shrinking look of fright, the tears starting to her eyes.

Cousin Tryphena was evidently afraid that I would not take her cue and sound the right note, for she went on hastily, “Mrs. Lindstrom has been real sick and kind o’ worried over the baby, so’s she’s some nervous.  I tell her Hillsboro air is thought very good for people’s nerves.  Lots of city folks come here in summer time, just for that.  Don’t you think Sigurd is a real big boy for only six and a half?  He knows his letters too!  He’s goin’ to school as soon as we get settled down.  I want you should bring over those alphabet blocks that your Peggy doesn’t use any more—­”

The other woman was openly crying now, clinging to her benefactress’ hand and holding it against her cheek as she sobbed.

My heroic old cousin patted her hair awkwardly, but kept on talking in her matter-of-fact manner, looking at me sternly as though defying me to show, by look or word, any consciousness of anything unusual in the situation; and we fell at once, she and I, into a commonplace conversation about the incidents of the trip up.

When I came away, half an hour later, Cousin Tryphena slipped a shawl over her head and came down the walk with me to the gate.  I was much affected by what seemed to me the dramatically fitting outcome of my old kinswoman’s Quixotism.  I saw Cousin Tryphena picturesquely as the Happy Fool of old folk-lore, the character who, through his very lack of worldly wisdom, attains without effort all that self-seeking folks try for in vain.  The happy ending of her adventure filled me with a cheerful wonder at the ways of Providence, which I tried to pass on to her in the exclamation, “Why, Cousin Tryphena, it’s like a story-book?  You’re going to enjoy having those people.  The woman is as nice as she can be, and that’s the brightest little boy!  He’s as smart as a whip!”

I was aware that the oddness of Cousin Tryphena’s manner still persisted even now that we were alone.  She sighed heavily and said, “I don’t sleep much better nights now I’ve done it!” Then facing me, “I hadn’t ought to have brought them up here!  I just did it to please myself!  Once I saw ’em ...  I wanted ’em!”