“Well,” said Sophia, “if you have got that done I wish you would take hold and string those beans.  The first thing we know there won’t be time to boil them for dinner.”

Amanda moved toward the pan of beans on the table, then she looked at her sister.

“Did you come up in Aunt Harriet’s room while I was there?” she asked weakly.

She knew while she asked what the answer would be.

“Up in Aunt Harriet’s room?  Of course I didn’t.  I couldn’t leave this cake without having it fall.  You know that well enough.  Why?”

“Nothing,” replied Amanda.

Suddenly she realized that she could not tell her sister what had happened, for before the utter absurdity of the whole thing her belief in her own reason quailed.  She knew what Sophia would say if she told her.  She could hear her.

“Amanda Gill, have you gone stark staring mad?”

She resolved that she would never tell Sophia.  She dropped into a chair and begun shelling the beans with nerveless fingers.  Sophia looked at her curiously.

“Amanda Gill, what on earth ails you?” she asked.

“Nothing,” replied Amanda.  She bent her head very low over the green pods.

“Yes, there is, too!  You are as white as a sheet, and your hands are shaking so you can hardly string those beans.  I did think you had more sense, Amanda Gill.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Sophia.”

“Yes, you do know what I mean, too; you needn’t pretend you don’t.  Why did you ask me if I had been in that room, and why do you act so queer?”

Amanda hesitated.  She had been trained to truth.  Then she lied.

“I wondered if you’d noticed how it had leaked in on the paper over by the bureau, that last rain,” said she.

“What makes you look so pale then?”

“I don’t know.  I guess the heat sort of overcame me.”

“I shouldn’t think it could have been very hot in that room when it had been shut up so long,” said Sophia.

She was evidently not satisfied, but then the grocer came to the door and the matter dropped.

For the next hour the two women were very busy.  They kept no servant.  When they had come into possession of this fine old place by the death of their aunt it had seemed a doubtful blessing.  There was not a cent with which to pay for repairs and taxes and insurance, except the twelve hundred dollars which they had obtained from the sale of the little house in which they had been born and lived all their lives.  There had been a division in the old Ackley family years before.  One of the daughters had married against her mother’s wish and had been disinherited.  She had married a poor man by the name of Gill, and shared his humble lot in sight of her former home and her sister and mother living in prosperity, until she had borne three daughters; then she died, worn out with overwork and worry.