Then she would burst into tears.  It never occurred to her that she might try to make it less miserable for Huldah, by trying to be cheerful herself sometimes.

“I’m not fretting.  I love taking care of you,” pleaded poor Huldah.  “I was only trying to think how to make a new-shaped basket that people might take a fancy to.  Shall I read to you, Aunt Emma?”

Emma Smith loved being read to, and hour after hour Huldah spent over a book when she knew she ought to be at her basket-making.  To try to make up the time, she got up at four or five in the morning, but in the winter that meant burning oil, and they could not afford that.  Then one day it occurred to her to sing instead of reading, and after that she found things easier, for she could sing while she worked.

It was a strange medley of songs that echoed through the rooms in the thin child-like voice.  “Home, sweet Home,” “Father, dear Father, come Home,” “God save the King,” “The Old Folks at Home,” were some of their favourites, and if the words and air were not always correct, they never failed to bring pleasure to both performer and audience.

Of hymns Huldah had a greater store in her brain, and by degrees these ousted the songs as favourites.

“Sing that one about the green hill without any wall round it,” Aunt Emma said one day.  “It does mind me so of ’ome when we were children.  Our cottage was just at the foot of a hill like that, and mother used to turn us out there to play together by the hour.  It was what they call a mountain.  We used to dare each other to go to the top.”

“Did you ever do it?” asked Huldah, plaiting away industriously.

“Never; we was so afraid.  It was so high up, and the top looked so far away, and—­oh, it used to frighten me!  I’d dream at night that I was lost up there, and I’d call and call, and nobody ever heard me or came to save me.”

“He’d have saved, if you’d asked Him,” said Huldah, gravely.

“I wonder why He didn’t save Himself,” said Aunt Emma.  “I spose He could have, couldn’t He?”

“Oh yes, He could, and He could have struck all His enemies down dead if He’d liked, only He was always one for thinking about others, never about Himself.”

“And that’s the sort that always gets put upon,” said Aunt Emma, quickly.

    “He died that we might go to Heaven,
     He died to make us good,
     He died that we might be forgiven—­”

Aunt Emma’s voice failed, and she suddenly burst into tears.  “I couldn’t never be good enough,” she sobbed, piteously.  “I haven’t been good since I was a child, and now I’m going to die—­I know it, I feel it, I see it in the doctor’s face, and—­and everybody’s.  I’ve got to die, and just when I’m happy for the first time.  He says He loves everybody, but nobody ever loved me, I never gave ’em reason to, and—­and I’m afraid to die, Huldah!  I’ve been so bad, and it’ll be so lonely!  I wouldn’t mind so much if there was somebody over—­over the other side that loved me.”