he old lady, and taking her
a pot or so of jam in fruiting season, or a turnover, maybe, on a
baking-day, if the oven had been steady and the baking turned out
well. And you couldn't have told from aunt's manner which of us she
liked best; and there were some folks who thought she might leave
half to me and half to Sarah, for she hadn't chick nor child of her
own.

But aunt was of a having nature, and what she had once got together
she couldn't bear to see scattered. Even if it was only what she had
got in her rag-bag, she would give it to one person to make a big
quilt of, rather than give it to two persons to make two little
quilts.

So Sarah and me, we knew that the money might come to either or
neither of us, but go to both it wouldn't.

Now, some people don't believe in special mercies, but I have always
thought there must have been something out of the common way for
things to happen as they did the day Aunt Maria sprained her ankle.
She sent over to the farm where we were living with my mother (who
was a sensible woman, and carried on the farm much better than most
men would have done, though that's neither here nor there) to ask if
Sarah or me could be spared to go and look after her a bit, for the
doctor said she couldn't put her foot to the ground for a week or
more.

Now, the minister I sit under always warns us against superstition,
which, I take it, means believing more than you have any occasion
to. And I'm not more given to it than most folks, but still I always
have said, and I always shall say, that there's a special Providence
above us, and it wasn't for nothing that Sarah was laid up with a
quinsy that very morning. So I put a few things together--in Sarah's
hat-tin, I remember, which was handier to carry than my own--and I
went up to the cottage.

Aunt was in bed, and whether it was the sprained ankle or the hot
weather I don't know, but the old lady was cantankerous past all
believing.

'Good-morning, aunt,' I said, when I went in, 'and however did this
happen?'

'Oh, you've come, have you?' she said, without answering my
question, 'and brought enough luggage to last you a year, I'll be
bound. When I was young, a girl could go to spend a week without
nonsense of boxes or the like. A clean shift and a change of
stockings done up in a cotton handkerchief--that was good enough for
us. But now, you girls must all be young ladies. I've no patience
with you.'

I didn't answer back, for answe