Araminta's heart reproached her, but the blood of some fighting
ancestor was in her pulses now. "I know, Aunt Hitty," she said,
kindly, "you've done all that and more, and I'm not in the least
ungrateful, though you may think so. But I'm not going to make any
more quilts!"

"Araminta Lee," said Miss Mehitable, warningly, "look careful where
you're steppin'. Hell is yawning in front of you this very minute!"

Araminta smiled sweetly. Since the day the minister had gone to see
her, she had had no fear of hell. "I don't see it, Aunt Hitty," she
said, "but if everybody who hasn't pieced more than eight quilts by
hand is in there, it must be pretty crowded."

"Araminta Lee," cried Miss Mehitable, "you're your mother all over
again. She got just as high-steppin' as you before her downfall, and
see where she ended at. She was married," concluded the accuser,
scornfully, "yes, actually married!"

"Aunt Hitty," said Araminta, her sweet mouth quivering ever so little,
"your mother was married, too, wasn't she?" With this parting shaft,
the girl went out of the room, her head held high.

Miss Mehitable stared after her, uncomprehending. Slowly it dawned
upon her that some one had been telling tales and undoing her careful
work. "Minty! Minty!" she cried, "how can you talk to me so!"

But 'Minty' was outdoors and on her way to Miss Evelina's, bareheaded,
this being strictly forbidden, so she did not hear. She was hoping
against hope that some day, at Miss Evelina's, she might meet Doctor
Ralph again and tell him she was sorry she had broken his heart.

Since the day he went away from her, Araminta had not had even a
glimpse of him. She had gone to his father's funeral, as everyone else
in the village did, and had wondered that he was not in the front seat,
where, in her brief experience of funerals, mourners usually sat.

She admitted, to herself, that she had gone to the funeral solely for
the sake of seeing Doctor Ralph. Araminta was wholly destitute of
curiosity regarding the dead, and she had not joined the interested
procession which wound itself around Anthony Dexter's coffin before
passing out, regretfully, at the front door. Neither had Miss
Mehitable. At the time, Araminta had thought it strange, for at all
previous occasions of the kind, within her remembrance. Aunt Hitty had
been well up among the mourners and had usually gone around the casket
twice.

At Miss Evelina's, she knocked in vain.