Julia appeared before them, cool in blue checked
gingham, with an enveloping white apron and familiarly floury hands.

"I'm just beating up some biscuit for tea," she explained, "but I guess
you can shake hands with me, girls "; and as she extended both arms
hospitably they saw upon her floured left hand an unmistakable shining
gold band.

"Aunt Jule!" they gasped together. "Are you--is it--"

"That's it exactly," said Cousin Lorando Bean. "She is. And I hope
you'll congratulate her, girls, though nobody knows better than I what a
good housekeeper you've lost! I'll tell you the facts of the matter, and
you can judge for yourself. If ever two people were made for each other,
those two are your Aunt Jule and me. We love the country, and we love
this farm, and what's very important, we love the same way of living."

"That's quite true, Carrie--lyn," Aunt Julia interposed, the tears in
her eyes, but a new decision in her voice.

"I like my tea at night, and so does your Cousin Lorando. And I should
have wanted gravy on my potato if I lived to be a hundred. And, Carrie,
I _could not live_ without a cellar!

"And if you knew how nervous I got when that old dumb-waiter in the
kitchen used to whistle for the things to be put on it! I used to hate
it so--sometimes I'd wake up in the night and think I heard it! Once I
lost my temper at it, and I answered it back: 'I haven't anything to go
down, and I wouldn't give it to you if I had!'"

"Why, Aunt Jule!" they cried.

"And I tell you, Carrie, when you have cleaned house regularly, spring
and fall, for forty years, ever since you were born, it makes an awful
break to give it up! And I do love a good crayon portrait."

They looked at each other in silence.

"And when you have a set of furniture, it makes me nervous not to have
it set together," Aunt Julia went on determinedly.

"And I will _not_ have a woman smoking in my house!

"And oh, Carrie, if you knew how I suffered with that dirty darky girl!"

"But--but, Aunt Jule, why didn't you--"

"You see, Carrie and Lizzie, it was this way," said Mr. Bean soothingly.

"Your aunt and I got talking old times, and we found that we both felt
about the same. And after we'd looked the old house over together a day
or two, she couldn't seem to leave it, somehow, and she couldn't live in
it alone, and I always wanted it.

"So I said, 'If you'll just step over to the parson's, across the
street, with me, we'll fix this all rig