strong enough to do anythin’—­when all the time Luella wa’n’t liftin’ her finger and poor Lily didn’t get any care except what the neighbours gave her, and Luella eat up everythin’ that was carried in for Lily.  I had it real straight that she did.  Luella used to just sit and cry and do nothin’.  She did act real fond of Lily, and she pined away considerable, too.  There was those that thought she’d go into a decline herself.  But after Lily died, her Aunt Abby Mixter came, and then Luella picked up and grew as fat and rosy as ever.  But poor Aunt Abby begun to droop just the way Lily had, and I guess somebody wrote to her married daughter, Mrs. Sam Abbot, who lived in Barre, for she wrote her mother that she must leave right away and come and make her a visit, but Aunt Abby wouldn’t go.  I can see her now.  She was a real good-lookin’ woman, tall and large, with a big, square face and a high forehead that looked of itself kind of benevolent and good.  She just tended out on Luella as if she had been a baby, and when her married daughter sent for her she wouldn’t stir one inch.  She’d always thought a lot of her daughter, too, but she said Luella needed her and her married daughter didn’t.  Her daughter kept writin’ and writin’, but it didn’t do any good.  Finally she came, and when she saw how bad her mother looked, she broke down and cried and all but went on her knees to have her come away.  She spoke her mind out to Luella, too.  She told her that she’d killed her husband and everybody that had anythin’ to do with her, and she’d thank her to leave her mother alone.  Luella went into hysterics, and Aunt Abby was so frightened that she called me after her daughter went.  Mrs. Sam Abbot she went away fairly cryin’ out loud in the buggy, the neighbours heard her, and well she might, for she never saw her mother again alive.  I went in that night when Aunt Abby called for me, standin’ in the door with her little green-checked shawl over her head.  I can see her now.  ’Do come over here, Miss Anderson,’ she sung out, kind of gasping for breath.  I didn’t stop for anythin’.  I put over as fast as I could, and when I got there, there was Luella laughin’ and cryin’ all together, and Aunt Abby trying to hush her, and all the time she herself was white as a sheet and shakin’ so she could hardly stand.  ‘For the land sakes, Mrs. Mixter,’ says I, ’you look worse than she does.  You ain’t fit to be up out of your bed.’

“‘Oh, there ain’t anythin’ the matter with me,’ says she.  Then she went on talkin’ to Luella.  ’There, there, don’t, don’t, poor little lamb,’ says she.  ‘Aunt Abby is here.  She ain’t goin’ away and leave you.  Don’t, poor little lamb.’

“‘Do leave her with me, Mrs. Mixter, and you get back to bed,’ says I, for Aunt Abby had been layin’ down considerable lately, though somehow she contrived to do the work.

“‘I’m well enough,’ says she.  ’Don’t you think she had better have the doctor, Miss Anderson?’