“You may think,” the narrator resumed, when he felt that he had settled Mr. Dickey, “whether or not you’d miss a woman like that, when you’d summered and wintered with her more’n forty year.  She always said she hoped she’d go sudden, for she was so heavy it would ‘a’ took three or four of the common run of folks to lift her, and she dreaded a long sickness.  Well, she was took at her word.  We was settin’, as it might be now, one on one side the fire, the other on t’other, in the big easy-cheers that Samuel—­that’s our oldest son, and a good boy, if I do say it—­had sent us with the fust spare money he had.  She’d been laughin’ and jokin’, as she so often did, five minutes afore.  Gracie—­she was a little thing then, and, bein’ the youngest, a little sassy and sp’iled, mebbe—­had been on a trip to the city, and she’d brought her ma a present of a shoe-buttoner with a handle a full foot long.

“‘There, ma,’ she says, laughin’ up in her mother’s face; ’you was complainin’ about the distance it seemed to be to your feet:  here’s a kind of a telegraft-pole to shorten it a little.’

“My, how we did laugh!  And Lavina must needs try it right away, to please Gracie; and she said it worked beautiful.  But whether it was the laughin’ so much right on top of a hearty supper, or the bendin’ down to try her new toy, or both, she jest says, as natural as I’m speakin’ now, ‘Jabez, I’m a-goin’—­’ and then stopped.  And when I looked up to see why she didn’t finish, she was gone, sure enough.”

His voice broke, and he stopped abruptly.  Mr. Birchard, without in the least intending to do it, grasped his hand, and held it with affectionate warmth for a moment.

“Thank you, young man, thank you kindly,” said Uncle Jabez, recovering his voice and shaking Mr. Birchard’s hand heartily at the same moment.  “You’ve an uncommon feelin’ heart for one so young.

“To say I was lonesome after she went don’t say much; but time evens things out after a while, or we couldn’t stand it as long as we do.  Gracie she settled into a little woman all at once, as you may say, and seemed older for a while than she does now.  The rest was all married and gone, but one boy,—­a good boy, too.  But they came around me, comfortin’ and helpin’, though each one of ’em mourned her nigh as much as I did myself; and after a while, as I said, I got used, in a manner, to doin’ ’ithout her.”

Here he made a long pause, with his eyes intently fixed upon the darkness of the adjoining store-room.  The heat from the stove had become too great after the shutting of the shutters, and one of the men had opened an inner door for ventilation.

Now, as one pair of eyes after another followed those of the old man, there was a sort of subdued stir around the circle, and the schoolmaster, to his intense disgust, caught himself looking hastily over his shoulder,—­the door being behind him.

Mr. Dickey broke the spell by suddenly rising, with the exclamation, “I think we’re cooled off about enough; and, as I’m a little rheumaticky to-night, I’ll shut that door, if you’ve none of you no objections.”