h the worried gleam in his. However, before going to bed she told
him that she would have to leave him and go to her nephew's as soon as
he was well enough to be about again.

CHAPTER XXI

"I SHALL WANT MY EM'LY."

ON THAT same night Uncle Ambrose suffered a relapse and remained in bed
for another week; however, he had already got sufficiently rested from
his previous laying up and, besides, even at seventy-six he had not yet
come to evading an issue. He was merely taking time to think.

One evening just as the lamps in his room were being lighted he called
Elizabeth to his bed. "I'm goin' to git up to-morrow, 'Lizabeth, and
stay up; I'm 'bout as well now as I'm ever goin' to be, seein' as I'm
gittin' older each day 'stid of younger," he said with the gentle
firmness that had always come to him in big moments.

With a nervous trembling Elizabeth smoothed the old man's pillows,
tucking his blankets in more closely about him. "I'm reel glad fer you,
Uncle Ambrose; then you won't be needin' me much longer."

But the old man shook his head. "Set down, 'Lizabeth, I want to talk to
you; I don't want my supper, leastways not yet."

But when Elizabeth had seated herself by the side of his bed for a time
he continued silent while his glance wandered from the spot where his
daguerreotype hung alongside the wall to the figure of the elderly
worried spinster, and once catching a reflection of himself in the
looking glass with a night cap tied under his chin and then a vision of
Elizabeth, suddenly his blue eyes under their overhanging brows brimmed
over.

"'Lizabeth," he inquired at length, "did I ever show you the picture of
my Em'ly?"

"You ain't exactly showed it to me," she replied kindly, "but I been
seein' it every day when I come in here to clean; she's got a kind of
different face; it's a pity she had to leave you."

Uncle Ambrose only cleared his throat a trifle more huskily. "You're a
good woman, too, 'Lizabeth, and so was little Sarah and Peachy Tarwater,
and you're makin' my declinin' days peacefuller, givin' me a chance to
relish things that is past, and to hope fer things to come. Not that I
kin say you're one mortal bit like Em'ly, cause you ain't, but all
women 'a' got different ways, fer which the Lord be praised. I been
lyin' here thinkin' a darn sight lately; ain't had much else to do." But
if Uncle Ambrose expected a look of understanding in his companion's
face at this he was disappointed. "