thrushes begin to sing in the evening
without I looked down there and could almost see them two on their knees.

"Well, there she was, fourteen years old, with a two-year-old baby to look
out for, and all the rest of the family gone as though she'd dreamed 'em.
She was sure she and little Eddie--you're named for him, Eddie, and don't
you never forget it--would die, of course, like the others, but she wa'n't
any hand to give up till she had to, and she wanted to die last, so to
look out for the baby. So when she took sick she fought the smallpox just
like a wolf, she used to tell us. She had to live, to take care of Eddie.
She gritted her teeth and _wouldn't_ die, though, as she always said,
'twould ha' been enough sight more comfortable than to live through what
she did.

"Some folks nowadays say it couldn't ha' been smallpox she had, or she
couldn't ha' managed. I don't know 'bout that. I guess 'twas plenty bad
enough, anyhow. She was out of her head a good share of th' time, but she
never forgot to milk the cow and give Eddie his meals. She used to fight
up on her knees (there was a week when she couldn't stand without fallin'
over in faint) and then crawl out to the cow-shed and sit down flat on
the ground and reach up to milk. One day the fever was so bad she was
clear crazy and she thought angels in silver shoes come right out there,
in the manure an' all, and milked for her and held the cup to
Eddie's mouth.

"An' one night she thought somebody, with a big black cape on, come and
stood over her with a knife. She riz up in bed and told him to '_git out_!
She'd _have_ to stay to take care of the baby!' And she hit at the knife
so fierce she knocked it right out'n his hand. Then she fainted away agin.
She didn't come to till mornin', and when she woke up she knew she was
goin' to live. She always said her hand was all bloody that morning from a
big cut in it, and she used to show us the scar--a big one 'twas, too. But
I guess most likely that come from something else. Folks was awful
superstitious in them days, and Aunt Debby was always kind o' queer.

"Well, an' so she did live and got well, though she never grew a mite from
that time. A little wizened-up thing she was, always; but I tell you folks
'round here thought a nawful lot of Aunt Debby! And Eddie, if you'll
believe it, never took the sickness at all. They say, sometimes, babies
don't.

"They got a fam'ly to come and work the farm for 'em, and Debby she