hair and render her dependent upon the service of others, but over
it, also, was she spiritual victor. She could sit in her kitchen and
issue orders; and her daughter, with no initiative genius of her own,
had all aunt Ann's love of "springin' to it." She cherished, besides, a
worshipful admiration for her mother; so that she asked no more than to
act as the humble hand under that directing head. It was Amos who
tacitly rebelled. When a boy in school, he virtually gave up talking,
and thereafter opened his lips only when some practical exigency was to
be filled. But once did he vouchsafe a reason for that eccentricity. It
was in his fifteenth year, as aunt Ann remembered well, when the
minister had called; and Amos, in response to some remark about his hope
of salvation, had looked abstractedly out of the window.

"I'd be ashamed," announced aunt Ann, after the minister had
gone,--"Amos, I _would_ be ashamed, if I couldn't open my head to a
minister o' the gospel!"

"If one head's open permanent in a house, I guess that fills the bill,"
said Amos, getting up to seek the woodpile. "I ain't goin' to interfere
with nobody else's contract."

His mother looked after him with gaping lips, and, for the space of half
an hour, spoke no word.

To-day she saw before her an alluring field of action; the prospect
roused within her energies never incapable of responding to a spur.

"My soul, 'Melia!" she exclaimed, looking about the kitchen with a
dominating eye, "how I should like to git hold o' this house! I al'ays
did have a hankerin' that way, an' I don't mind tellin' ye. You could
change it all round complete."

"It's a good house," said Amelia evasively, taking quick, even stitches,
but listening hungrily to the voice of outside temptation. It seemed to
confirm all the long-suppressed ambitions of her own heart.

"You're left well on 't," continued aunt Ann, her shrewd blue eyes
taking on a speculative look. "I'm glad you sold the stock. A woman
never undertakes man's work but she comes out the little eend o' the
horn. The house is enough, if you keep it nice. Now, you've got that
money laid away, an' all he left you besides. You could live in the
village, if you was a mind to."

A deep flush struck suddenly into Amelia's cheek. She thought of Saltash
and Laurie Morse.

"I don't want to live in the village," she said sharply, thus reproving
her own errant mind. "I like my home."

"Law, yes, of course ye do," replied