told him that wa’n’t saying much,” said she, with an evident consciousness of the underlying compliment and the doctor’s good opinion.  “I never knew one of that tribe that hadn’t a queer streak and wasn’t shif’less; but they’re tougher than ellum roots;” and she gave the wheel an emphatic turn, while Mrs. Snow reached for more rolls of wool, and happened to see me.

“Wherever did you come from?” said they, in great surprise.  “Why, you wasn’t anywhere in sight when I was out speaking to the doctor,” said Mrs. Snow.  “Oh, come over horseback, I suppose.  Well, now, we’re pleased to see ye.”

“No,” said I, “I walked across the fields.  It was too pleasant to stay in the house, and I haven’t had a long walk for some time before.”  I begged them not to stop spinning, but they insisted that they should not have turned the wheels a half-dozen times more, even if I had not come, and they pushed them back to the wall before they came to sit down to talk with me over their knitting—­for neither of them were ever known to be idle.  Mrs. Snow was only there for a visit; she was a widow, and lived during most of the year with her son; and Aunt Polly was at home but seldom herself, as she was a famous nurse, and was often in demand all through that part of the country.  I had known her all my days.  Everybody was fond of the good soul, and she had been one of the most useful women in the world.  One of my pleasantest memories is of a long but not very painful illness one winter, when she came to take care of me.  There was no end either to her stories or her kindness.  I was delighted to find her at home that afternoon, and Mrs. Snow also.

Aunt Polly brought me some of her gingerbread, which she knew I liked, and a stout little pitcher of milk, and we sat there together for a while, gossiping and enjoying ourselves.  I told all the village news that I could think of, and I was just tired enough to know it, and to be contented to sit still for a while in the comfortable three-cornered chair by the little front window.  The October sunshine lay along the clean kitchen floor, and Aunt Polly darted from her chair occasionally to catch stray little wisps of wool which the breeze through the door blew along from the wheels.  There was a gay string of red peppers hanging over the very high mantel-shelf, and the wood-work in the room had never been painted, and had grown dark brown with age and smoke and scouring.  The clock ticked solemnly, as if it were a judge giving the laws of time, and felt itself to be the only thing that did not waste it.  There was a bouquet of asparagus and some late sprigs of larkspur and white petunias on the table underneath, and a Leavitt’s Almanac lay on the county paper, which was itself lying on the big Bible, of which Aunt Polly made a point of reading two chapters every day in course.  I remember her saying, despairingly, one night, half to herself, “I don’ know but I may skip the Chronicles next time,” but I have never to this day believed that she did.  They asked me at once to come into the best room, but I liked the old kitchen best.  “Who was it that you were talking about as I came in?” said I.  “You said you didn’t believe there was much the matter with her.”  And Aunt Polly clicked her knitting-needles faster, and told me that it was Mary Susan Ash, over by Little Creek.