finished this, the
little girl holding tightly to the wrinkled old hand. How peaceful Aunt
Hetty was! Even the smell of her black woolen dresses always had a
_quiet_ smell. And she must see all those hunks of mud on the white
stairs, but she never said a word. Elly squeezed her hand a little
tighter.

What was it she had been thinking about on the hair-trunk that made her
so glad to feel Aunt Hetty peaceful? Oh yes, that Mother had been there,
where she was, when she was a little girl. Well, gracious! What of that?
She'd always known that Mother had visited Aunt Hetty a lot and that
Aunt Hetty had been awfully good to her, and that Mother loved Aunt
Hetty like everything. What had made it seem so queer, all of a sudden?

"Well," said Aunt Hetty at the front door, "step along now. I don't want
you should be late for supper." She tipped her head to look around the
edge of the top of the door and said, "Well, I declare, just see that
moon showing itself before ever the sun gets down."

She walked down the path a little way with Elly, who still held her
hand. They stood together looking up at the mountain, very high and blue
against the sky that was green . . . yes, it really was a pale, clear
green, at the top of the mountain-line. People always said the sky was
blue, except at sunset-time, like now, when it was filling the Notch
right to the top with every color that could be.

"The lilacs will begin to swell soon," said Aunt Hetty.

"I saw some pussy-willows out, today," answered Elly.

The old woman and the little girl lifted their heads, threw them back,
and looked up long into the sky, purely, palely high above them.

"It's quite a sightly place to live, Crittenden's is," said Aunt Hetty.

Elly said nothing, it being inconceivable to her that she could live
anywhere else.

"Well, good-bye," said Aunt Hetty. It did not occur to her to kiss the
little girl. It did not occur to Elly to want a kiss. They squeezed
their hands together a little bit more, and then Elly went down the
road, walking very carefully.

Why did she walk so carefully, she wondered? She felt as though she were
carrying a cup, full up to the brim of something. And she mustn't let it
spill. What was it so full of? Aunt Hetty's peacefulness, maybe.

Or maybe just because it was beginning to get twilight. That always made
you feel as though something was being poured softly into you, that you
mustn't spill. She was glad the side-road was so g