What was it she had been thinking about on the hair-trunk that made her so glad to feel Aunt Hetty peaceful?  Oh yes, that Mother had been there, where she was, when she was a little girl.  Well, gracious!  What of that?  She’d always known that Mother had visited Aunt Hetty a lot and that Aunt Hetty had been awfully good to her, and that Mother loved Aunt Hetty like everything.  What had made it seem so queer, all of a sudden?

“Well,” said Aunt Hetty at the front door, “step along now.  I don’t want you should be late for supper.”  She tipped her head to look around the edge of the top of the door and said, “Well, I declare, just see that moon showing itself before ever the sun gets down.”

She walked down the path a little way with Elly, who still held her hand.  They stood together looking up at the mountain, very high and blue against the sky that was green . . . yes, it really was a pale, clear green, at the top of the mountain-line.  People always said the sky was blue, except at sunset-time, like now, when it was filling the Notch right to the top with every color that could be.

“The lilacs will begin to swell soon,” said Aunt Hetty.

“I saw some pussy-willows out, today,” answered Elly.

The old woman and the little girl lifted their heads, threw them back, and looked up long into the sky, purely, palely high above them.

“It’s quite a sightly place to live, Crittenden’s is,” said Aunt Hetty.

Elly said nothing, it being inconceivable to her that she could live anywhere else.

“Well, good-bye,” said Aunt Hetty.  It did not occur to her to kiss the little girl.  It did not occur to Elly to want a kiss.  They squeezed their hands together a little bit more, and then Elly went down the road, walking very carefully.

Why did she walk so carefully, she wondered?  She felt as though she were carrying a cup, full up to the brim of something.  And she mustn’t let it spill.  What was it so full of?  Aunt Hetty’s peacefulness, maybe.

Or maybe just because it was beginning to get twilight.  That always made you feel as though something was being poured softly into you, that you mustn’t spill.  She was glad the side-road was so grass-grown.  You could walk on it, so still, like this, and never make a sound.

She thought again of Father and wished he would come home.  She liked Father.  He was solid.  He was solid like that solid earth she liked so much to walk on.  It was just such a comfort to feel him.  Father was like the solid ground and Mother was like the floaty clouds.  Why, yes, they were every way like what she had been thinking about. . . .  Father was the warm sun on the outside, and Mother was the cool wind on the inside.  Father was the end that was tied tight and firm so you knew you couldn’t lose it, and Mother was the end that streamed out like flags in the wind.  But they weren’t either of them like that slinky, swirly water, licking at you, in such a hurry to get on past you and get what it was scrambling to get, whatever that was.