rought. She saw
the little wrinkles about the eyes and the lines of care about the
mouth, the tired look of the whole plucky, workaday New England figure.
She shook her head.

"Religion!" she repeated. "I do believe, Aunt Keziah, that you've got
the very best religion of anybody I know. I don't care if you don't
belong to our church. When I see how patient you've been and how
cheerful through all your troubles, it--"

Mrs. Coffin waved the hammer deprecatingly. "There! there!" she
interrupted. "I guess it's a good thing I'm goin' away. Here's you and I
praisin' up each other's beliefs, just as if that wasn't a crime here
in Trumet. Sometimes when I see how the two societies in this little
one-horse place row with each other, I declare if it doesn't look as if
they'd crossed out the first word of 'Love your neighbor' and wrote in
'Fight,' instead. Yet I'm a pretty good Regular, too, and when it comes
to whoopin' and carryin' on like the Come-Outers, I--Well! well!
never mind; don't begin to bristle up. I won't say another word about
religion. Let's pick the new minister to pieces. ANY kind of a Christian
can do that."

But the new minister was destined to remain undissected that morning,
in that house at least. Grace was serious now and she voiced the matter
which had been uppermost in her mind since she left home.

"Aunt Keziah," she said, "why do you go away? What makes you? Is it
absolutely necessary?"

"Why do I go? Why, for the same reason that the feller that was hove
overboard left the ship--cause I can't stay. You've got to have vittles
and clothes, even in Trumet, and a place to put your head in nights.
Long's Sol was alive and could do his cobblin' we managed to get along
somehow. What I could earn sewin' helped, and we lived simple. But when
he was taken down and died, the doctor's bills and the undertaker's used
up what little money I had put by, and the sewin' alone wouldn't keep
a healthy canary in bird seed. Dear land knows I hate to leave the old
house I've lived in for fourteen years and the town I was born in, but
I've got to, for all I see. Thank mercy, I can pay Cap'n Elkanah his
last month's rent and go with a clear conscience. I won't owe anybody,
that's a comfort, and nobody will owe me; though I could stand that, I
guess," she added, prying at the carpet edge.

"I don't care!" The girl's dark eyes flashed indignantly. "I think it's
too bad of Cap'n Elkanah to turn you out when--"

"Don't