Mrs. Patton was a little ceremonious at first, but soon recovered herself and told us a great deal which we were glad to hear.  I asked her once if she had not always lived at Deephaven.  “Here and beyond East Parish,” said she.  “Mr. Patton,—­that was my husband,—­he owned a good farm there when I married him, but I come back here again after he died; place was all mortgaged.  I never got a cent, and I was poorer than when I started.  I worked harder ’n ever I did before or since to keep things together, but ‘t wasn’t any kind o’ use.  Your mother knows all about it, Miss Kate,”—­as if we might not be willing to believe it on her authority.  “I come back here a widow and destitute, and I tell you the world looked fair to me when I left this house first to go over there.  Don’t you run no risks, you’re better off as you be, dears.  But land sakes alive, ‘he’ didn’t mean no hurt! and he set everything by me when he was himself.  I don’t make no scruples of speaking about it, everybody knows how it was, but I did go through with everything.  I never knew what the day would bring forth,” said the widow, as if this were the first time she had had a chance to tell her sorrows to a sympathizing audience.  She did not seem to mind talking about the troubles of her married life any more than a soldier minds telling the story of his campaigns, and dwells with pride on the worst battle of all.

Her favorite subject always was Miss Brandon, and after a pause she said that she hoped we were finding everything right in the house; she had meant to take up the carpet in the best spare room, but it didn’t seem to need it; it was taken up the year before, and the room had not been used since, there was not a mite of dust under it last time.  And Kate assured her, with an appearance of great wisdom, that she did not think it could be necessary at all.

“I come home and had a good cry yesterday after I was over to see you,” said Mrs. Patton, and I could not help wondering if she really could cry, for she looked so perfectly dried up, so dry that she might rustle in the wind.  “Your aunt had been failin’ so long that just after she died it was a relief, but I’ve got so’s to forget all about that, and I miss her as she used to be; it seemed as if you had stepped into her place, and you look some as she used to when she was young.”

“You must miss her,” said Kate, “and I know how much she used to depend upon you.  You were very kind to her.”

“I sat up with her the night she died,” said the widow, with mournful satisfaction.  “I have lived neighbor to her all my life except the thirteen years I was married, and there wasn’t a week I wasn’t over to the great house except I was off to a distance taking care of the sick.  When she got to be feeble she always wanted me to ’tend to the cleaning and to see to putting the canopies and curtains on the bedsteads, and she wouldn’t trust nobody but me to handle some of the best china.