it was that 'Lizabeth took up the business of caring for Uncle
Ambrose Thompson until such time as the lumbago should depart from his
back.

[Illustration: "Thus it was that 'Lizabeth took up the business of
caring for Uncle Ambrose Thompson"]

From the first the old man could see that the spinster was enjoying
herself thoroughly; true, his cottage was small, but then it was exactly
like her own save that he had let his grow truly magnificent in its dirt
and disorder, being not of the type of male with perverted feminine
instincts, while Elizabeth never had had but one womanly passion
gratified and that was her love of putting a house to rights.

So for some little time Uncle Ambrose rather found pleasure in staying
in bed with the hateful burden of solitariness removed from him; he
loved listening to the familiar homely sounds of sweeping and the moving
about of furniture; it brought back--ah well, perhaps at seventy-six it
is something to have many things to remember.

And then, lying alone, he used to talk very often to his picture of
Emily, which still hung on its nail by the old pine bureau, for this
habit, begun after her death and only practised in secret during his
marriage to Peachy, had grown on him in these last seven years of
failing body and mind.

"She's a real good woman, Em'ly," he said several times, "and you'll be
glad to know she's makin' me more comfortable than I been in some time.
I was gittin' pretty tired. Seems like I might as well let this old
spinster stay on here and keep house fer me; she plumb likes it and I
reckon it's just one little thing more I kin do fer the sex. I ain't
much good at lonin' it, and 'tain't like I had old Miner now fer the in
betweens." And then he would laugh silently until the wrinkles in his
old face seemed little channels for merriment: "I been married so
frequent and got broke in to so many different sets of housekeepin'
ways, seems like I ain't troubled to form no ways of my own."

And in between dozing and talking to himself and the neighbours, who ran
in to inquire for his health, Uncle Ambrose used to spend some time in
reading his Bible. One afternoon when Elizabeth had been sitting by his
bedside sewing and thinking him asleep, he suddenly rose up in bed as
though completely ignoring the pain in his back and drawing his old
Bible across the coverlid opened it again at the place of the pressed
flowers.

"'Lizabeth," he asked after a moment of uncommon