before he took sick?" grumbled Abby, reducing Amanda to momentary
silence by her pitiless logic.

"Why didn't he, indeed?" echoed her heart gloomily, receiving nothing
in the way of answer from her limited experience of men.

Caleb had spoken more frequently the last few days. When by the
combined exertions of the Bensons and the doctor he had been brought
down into his mother's old room, Amanda closed the kitchen door,
thinking one experience at a time was enough for a man in his weak and
exhausted condition. William Benson couldn't see any sense in this
precaution, but he never did see much sense in what women-folks did.
He wanted to show Caleb the new paint and paper immediately, and
remark casually that he had done all the work while he was
"night-nursin'."

The next morning Amanda had seized a good opportunity to open the door
between the two rooms, straightway retiring to the side entry to await
developments. In a few moments she heard Caleb moving, and going in
found him half sitting up in bed, leaning on his elbow.

"What's the matter with the kitchen?" he asked feebly, staring with
wide-open eyes at the unaccustomed prospect.

"Only fresh paint an' paper; that's William's work."

"O God, I ain't worth it! I ain't worth it!" he groaned as he hid his
face in the pillow.

"Have you been here all the time?" he asked Amanda when she brought
him his gruel later in the day.

"Yes, off an' on, when I could get away from my own work."

"Who found me?"

"I did. I knew by the looks somethin' was wrong up here."

"Somethin' wrong, sure enough, an' always was!" Amanda heard him
mutter as he turned his face to the wall.

The next day he opened his eyes suddenly as she was passing through
the room.

"Did you make that pie William Benson brought me last month?"

"What made you think I did?"

"Oh, I don't know; it looked, an' it tasted like one o' yours," he
said, closing his eyes again. "If you know a woman, you can tell her
pie, somehow!"

When had Caleb Kimball ever tasted any of her cooking? A mysterious
remark, but everything he said sounded a trifle lightheaded.

His questions came back to her when she was waiting for William Benson
at twilight that same day.

Caleb had been sleeping quietly for an hour or more. Amanda was
standing at the stove stirring his arrowroot gruel. The kitchen was
still.

A smothered "_miaow_" and the scratching of claws on wood arrested her
attention, and she went hurri