ur Uncle Eben sayin' in prayer
meetin' only a fortni't or so ago that all hands who wa'n't Come-Outers
were own children to Satan? Mr. Ellery must take after his father some.
Surprisin', ain't it, what a family the old critter's got."

The girl laughed again. For one brought up, since her seventh year,
in the strictest of Come-Outer families, she laughed a good deal. Many
Come-Outers considered it wicked to laugh. Yet Grace did it, and hers
was a laugh pleasant to hear and distinctly pleasant to see. It made her
prettier than ever, a fact which, if she was aware of it, should have
been an additional preventive, for to be pretty smacks of vanity.
Perhaps she wasn't aware of it.

"What do you think Uncle Eben would say if he heard that?" she asked.

"Say I took after my father, too, I presume likely. Does your uncle know
you come here to see me so often? And call me 'aunt' and all that?"

"Of course he does. Aunt Keziah, you mustn't think Uncle Eben doesn't
see the good in people simply because they don't believe as he does.
He's as sweet and kind as--"

"Who? Eben Hammond? Land sakes, child, don't I know it? Cap'n Eben's the
salt of the earth. I'm a Regular and always have been, but I'd be glad
if my own society was seasoned with a few like him. 'Twould taste better
to me of a Sunday." She paused, and then added quizzically: "What d'you
s'pose Cap'n Elkanah and the rest of our parish committee would say if
they heard THAT?"

"Goodness knows! Still, I'm glad to hear you say it. And uncle says you
are as good a woman as ever lived. He thinks you're misled, of course,
but that some day you'll see the error of your ways."

"Humph! I'll have to hurry up if I want to see 'em without spectacles.
See my errors! Land sakes! much as I can do to see the heads of these
tacks. Takin' up carpets is as hard a test of a body's eyesight as 'tis
of their religion."

Her companion put down the tablecloth she was folding and looked
earnestly at the other woman. To an undiscerning eye the latter would
have looked much as she always did--plump and matronly, with brown hair
drawn back from the forehead and parted in the middle; keen brown eyes
with a humorous twinkle in them--this was the Keziah Coffin the later
generation of Trumet knew so well.

But Grace Van Horne, who called her aunt and came to see her so
frequently, while her brother was alive and during the month following
his death, could see the changes which the month had w