thing when there is nothing to say.

"What you thinking about?" he asked suddenly.

Dilly looked up at him with her bright, truth-telling glance. "I was
thinkin'," she answered, with a clarity never ruthless, because it was
so sweet,--"I was thinkin' you make me homesick, somehow or another."

Jethro looked at her doubtfully, and then, as she smiled at him, he
smiled also.

"I don't believe it's me," he said, confidently. "It's because you're
going over things here. It's the old house."

"Maybe," said Dilly, nodding and tying her last bundle of papers. "But I
don't know. I never had quite such feelin's before. It's the nearest to
bein' afraid of anything I've come acrost. I guess I shall have to run
out into the lot an' take my bearin's."

Jethro got up, put his hands in his pockets, and walked about the room.
He was very gentle, but he did at heart cherish the masculine theory
that the unusual in woman is never to be judged by rules.

"But it is a queer kind of a day," owned Dilly, pushing in the last
drawer. "Why, Jethro!" She faced him, and her voice broke in excitement.
"You don't know, I ain't begun to tell you, how queer it seems to me.
Why, I've dreaded this day for weeks! but when it come nigh, it begun to
seem to me like a joyful thing. I felt as if they all knew of it: them
that was gone. It seemed as if they stood 'round me, ready to uphold me
in what I was doin'. I shouldn't be surprised if they were all here now.
I don't feel a mite alone."

Her voice shook with excitement; her eyes were big and black. Jethro
came up to her, and laid a kindly hand on her shoulder. It was a fine
hand, long and shapely, and Dilly, looking down at it, remembered, with
a strange regretfulness, how she had once loved its lines.

"There, poor girl!" he said, "you're tired thinking about it. No wonder
you've got fancies. I guess the ghosts won't trouble us. There's nothing
here worse than ourselves." And again, in spite of the Joyces, Dilly
felt homesick and alone.

There came a soft thudding sound upon the kitchen floor, and she turned,
alert, to listen. This was Mrs. Eli Pike in her carpet slippers; she had
stood so much over soap-making that week that her feet had taken to
swelling. She was no older than Dilly, but she had seemed matronly in
her teens. She looked very large, as she padded forward through the
doorway, and her pink face and double chin seemed to exude kindliness as
she came.

"There, Dilly Joyce! if