I wasn't very
well. I suppose it may have been the change of weather."

Mrs. Todd could not resist a significant glance at me, but, with
charming sympathy, she forbore to point the lesson or to connect this
illness with its apparent cause. She loomed larger than ever in the
little old-fashioned best room, with its few pieces of good furniture
and pictures of national interest. The green paper curtains were
stamped with conventional landscapes of a foreign order,--castles
on inaccessible crags, and lovely lakes with steep wooded shores;
under-foot the treasured carpet was covered thick with home-made rugs.
There were empty glass lamps and crystallized bouquets of grass and some
fine shells on the narrow mantelpiece.

"I was married in this room," said Mrs. Todd unexpectedly; and I heard
her give a sigh after she had spoken, as if she could not help the touch
of regret that would forever come with all her thoughts of happiness.

"We stood right there between the windows," she added, "and the minister
stood here. William wouldn't come in. He was always odd about seein'
folks, just's he is now. I run to meet 'em from a child, an' William,
he'd take an' run away."

"I've been the gainer," said the old mother cheerfully. "William has
been son an' daughter both since you was married off the island. He's
been 'most too satisfied to stop at home 'long o' his old mother, but I
always tell 'em I'm the gainer."

We were all moving toward the kitchen as if by common instinct. The best
room was too suggestive of serious occasions, and the shades were
all pulled down to shut out the summer light and air. It was indeed a
tribute to Society to find a room set apart for her behests out there
on so apparently neighborless and remote an island. Afternoon visits
and evening festivals must be few in such a bleak situation at certain
seasons of the year, but Mrs. Blackett was of those who do not live to
themselves, and who have long since passed the line that divides mere
self-concern from a valued share in whatever Society can give and take.
There were those of her neighbors who never had taken the trouble to
furnish a best room, but Mrs. Blackett was one who knew the uses of a
parlor.

"Yes, do come right out into the old kitchen; I shan't make any stranger
of you," she invited us pleasantly, after we had been properly received
in the room appointed to formality. "I expect Almiry, here, 'll be
driftin' out 'mongst the pasture-weeds