Once I couldn’t stand it:  I went over and helped him pitch some wood on the cart—­I was always strong in my arms.  I wouldn’t stop for all he told me to, and I guess he was glad enough for the help.  That was only a week before he died.  He fell on the kitchen floor while he was gettin’ breakfast.  He always got the breakfast and let Luella lay abed.  He did all the sweepin’ and the washin’ and the ironin’ and most of the cookin’.  He couldn’t bear to have Luella lift her finger, and she let him do for her.  She lived like a queen for all the work she did.  She didn’t even do her sewin’.  She said it made her shoulder ache to sew, and poor Erastus’s sister Lily used to do all her sewin’.  She wa’n’t able to, either; she was never strong in her back, but she did it beautifully.  She had to, to suit Luella, she was so dreadful particular.  I never saw anythin’ like the fagottin’ and hemstitchin’ that Lily Miller did for Luella.  She made all Luella’s weddin’ outfit, and that green silk dress, after Maria Babbit cut it.  Maria she cut it for nothin’, and she did a lot more cuttin’ and fittin’ for nothin’ for Luella, too.  Lily Miller went to live with Luella after Erastus died.  She gave up her home, though she was real attached to it and wa’n’t a mite afraid to stay alone.  She rented it and she went to live with Luella right away after the funeral.”

Then this old woman, Lydia Anderson, who remembered Luella Miller, would go on to relate the story of Lily Miller.  It seemed that on the removal of Lily Miller to the house of her dead brother, to live with his widow, the village people first began to talk.  This Lily Miller had been hardly past her first youth, and a most robust and blooming woman, rosy-cheeked, with curls of strong, black hair overshadowing round, candid temples and bright dark eyes.  It was not six months after she had taken up her residence with her sister-in-law that her rosy colour faded and her pretty curves became wan hollows.  White shadows began to show in the black rings of her hair, and the light died out of her eyes, her features sharpened, and there were pathetic lines at her mouth, which yet wore always an expression of utter sweetness and even happiness.  She was devoted to her sister; there was no doubt that she loved her with her whole heart, and was perfectly content in her service.  It was her sole anxiety lest she should die and leave her alone.

“The way Lily Miller used to talk about Luella was enough to make you mad and enough to make you cry,” said Lydia Anderson.  “I’ve been in there sometimes toward the last when she was too feeble to cook and carried her some blanc-mange or custard—­somethin’ I thought she might relish, and she’d thank me, and when I asked her how she was, say she felt better than she did yesterday, and asked me if I didn’t think she looked better, dreadful pitiful, and say poor Luella had an awful time takin’ care of her and doin’ the work—­she wa’n’t