ing had ceased the old maid's face looked gray.

"It ain't that I ain't goin' to a good home, Uncle Ambrose," she
explained, "and I suppose they'll be as good to me as they can to a
piece of furniture that don't fit in and ain't nowheres needed in their
house. I can't expect a man to understand, but when a woman don't never
marry and hasn't a husband or children of her own, seems like all she
has to set store by is just _things_, havin' a _home_ of her own. I done
my best to keep mine since mother died and her pension stopped, by
picklin' and preservin', but somehow I can't manage it." And now the
woman's voice held the quiet acceptance of defeat which is sadder than
any protest of tears.

She was looking into her lap at her knotted, hardworking and yet
unsuccessful hands as she spoke, or else she would have seen the light
of the understanding she denied in the old face opposite hers, which had
not, I think, failed any woman in nearly threescore years.

"I've done smelt your efforts, 'Lizabeth," Uncle Ambrose murmured
kindly. "They've often come right through the boards of my side wall. I
wisht I knowed some way to help you out, but I can't somehow see it."

Nevertheless when Elizabeth had made her old neighbour as comfortable
for the night as she knew how by putting fresh coals on his fire and by
fastening down his windows, and had said good night, still he continued
sitting in the same place, wearing a look of uncomfortable gravity,
until by and by hobbling once more into his bedroom he returned with a
small daguerreotype in his hand and for a long while kept studying it,
with his lips moving silently, and then suddenly said aloud: "Whatever
on this earth am I goin' to do 'bout that old maid, Em'ly honey? She's
poor and lonesome and she's scaired, and, moreover, she's powerful
homely." And then just for an instant piercing the mists over his old
eyes the immortal light of laughter flickered.

"I reckon you think I've done earned a trifle of repose from worryin' on
females, don't you, honey?" he inquired as he made his solitary way
toward bed.

CHAPTER XX

"GIVING IN MARRIAGE"

IN A similar cottage on one side of old Ambrose Thompson, as has already
been explained, there now dwelt the single departing spinster, Elizabeth
Horton, whom Uncle Ambrose regarded as a newcomer, her occupancy lying
somewhat within the period of twenty years, while on the other side
there still remained his youthful enemy, Susa