“It ain’t what I call watching,” said she, apologetically.  “We both doze off, and then when the folks come in in the morning she’ll tell what a sufferin’ night she’s had.  She likes to have it said she has to have watchers.”

“It’s strange what a queer streak there is running through the whole of ’em,” said Aunt Polly, presently.  “It always was so, far back’s you can follow ’em.  Did you ever hear about that great-uncle of theirs that lived over to the other side o’ Denby, over to what they call the Denby Meadows?  We had a cousin o’ my father’s that kept house for him (he was a single man), and I spent most of a summer and fall with her once when I was growing up.  She seemed to want company:  it was a lonesome sort of a place.”

“There!  I don’t know when I have thought to’ that,” said Mrs. Snow, looking much amused.  “What stories you did use to tell, after you come home, about the way he used to act!  Dear sakes! she used to keep us laughing till we was tired.  Do tell her about him, Polly; she’ll like to hear.”

“Well, I’ve forgot a good deal about it:  you see it was much as fifty years ago.  I wasn’t more than seventeen or eighteen years old.  He was a very respectable man, old Mr. Dan’el Gunn was, and a cap’n in the militia in his day.  Cap’n Gunn, they always called him.  He was well off, but he got sun-struck, and never was just right in his mind afterward.  When he was getting over his sickness after the stroke he was very wandering, and at last he seemed to get it into his head that he was his own sister Patience that died some five or six years before:  she was single too, and she always lived with him.  They said when he got so’s to sit up in his arm-chair of an afternoon, when he was getting better, he fought ’em dreadfully because they fetched him his own clothes to put on; he said they was brother Dan’el’s clothes.  So, sure enough, they got out an old double gown, and let him put it on, and he was as peaceable as could be.  The doctor told ’em to humor him, but they thought it was a fancy he took, and he would forget it; but the next day he made ’em get the double gown again, and a cap too, and there he used to set up alongside of his bed as prim as a dish.  When he got round again so he could set up all day, they thought he wanted the dress; but no; he seemed to be himself, and had on his own clothes just as usual in the morning; but when he took his nap after dinner and waked up again, he was in a dreadful frame o’ mind, and had the trousers and coat off in no time, and said he was Patience.  He used to fuss with some knitting-work he got hold of somehow; he was good-natured as could be, and sometimes he would make ’em fetch him the cat, because Patience used to have a cat that set in her lap while she knit.  I wasn’t there then, you know, but they used to tell me about it.  Folks used to call him Miss Dan’el Gunn.