and Amelia laughed.

"No," said she, with a little defiant movement of her own crisp head, "I
don't know as I do want you to-night!"

Laurie shook himself into his coat. "Well," he said, on his way to the
door, "I'll be round Saturday, whether or no. And Milly," he added
significantly, his hand on the latch, "you've got to like me then!"

Amelia laughed. "I guess there won't be no trouble!" she called after
him daringly.

She stood there in the biting wind, while he uncovered the horse and
drove away. Then she went shaking back to her fire; but it was not
altogether from cold. The sense of the consistency of love and youth,
the fine justice with which nature was paying an old debt, had raised
her to a stature above her own. She stood there under the mantel, and
held by it while she trembled. For the first time, her husband had gone
utterly out of her life. It was as though he had not been.

"Saturday!" she said to herself. "Saturday! Three days till then!"

Next morning, the spring asserted itself,--there came a whiff of wind
from the south and a feeling of thaw. The sled-runners began to cut
through to the frozen ground, and about the tree-trunks, where thin
crusts of ice were sparkling, came a faint musical sound of trickling
drops. The sun was regnant, and little brown birds flew cheerily over
the snow and talked of nests.

Amelia finished her housework by nine o'clock, and then sat down in her
low rocker by the south window, sewing in thrifty haste. The sun fell
hotly through the panes, and when she looked up, the glare met her eyes.
She seemed to be sitting in a golden shower, and she liked it. No
sunlight ever made her blink, or screw her face into wrinkles. She
throve in it like a rose-tree. At ten o'clock, one of the slow-moving
sleds, out that day in premonition of a "spell o' weather," swung
laboriously into her yard and ground its way up to the side-door. The
sled was empty, save for a rocking-chair where sat an enormous woman
enveloped in shawls, her broad face surrounded by a pumpkin hood. Her
dark brown front came low over her forehead, and she wore spectacles
with wide bows, which gave her an added expression of benevolence. She
waved a mittened hand to Amelia when their eyes met, and her heavy face
broke up into smiles.

"Here I be!" she called in a thick, gurgling voice, as Amelia hastened
out, her apron thrown over her head. "Didn't expect me, did ye? Nobody
looks for an old rheumatic creatur'