ly,
folding her work and taking off her thimble. "I'd just as soon as not."

All through the dinner hour aunt Ann kept up an inspiring stream of
question and reminiscence.

"You _be_ a good cook, 'Melia, an' no mistake," she remarked, breaking
her brown hot biscuit. "This your same kind o' bread, made without
yeast?"

"Yes," answered Amelia, pouring the tea. "I save a mite over from the
last risin'."

Aunt Ann smelled the biscuit critically. "Well, it makes proper nice
bread," she said, "but seems to me that's a terrible shif'less way to go
about it. However 'd you happen to git hold on 't? You wa'n't never
brought up to 't."

"His mother used to make it so. 'T was no great trouble, and 't would
have worried him if I'd changed."

When the lavender-sprigged china had been washed and the hearth swept
up, the room fell into its aspect of afternoon repose. The cat, after
another serious ablution, sprang up into a chair drawn close to the
fireplace, and coiled herself symmetrically on the faded patchwork
cushion. Amelia stroked her in passing. She liked to see puss
appropriate that chair; her purr from it renewed the message of domestic
content.

"Now," said Amelia, "I'll get the still."

"Bring down anything else that's ancient!" called aunt Ann. "We've
pretty much got red o' such things over t' our house, but I kind o' like
to see 'em."

When Amelia returned, she staggered under a miscellaneous burden: the
still, some old swifts for winding yarn, and a pair of wool-cards.

"I don't believe you know so much about cardin' wool as I do," she said,
in some triumph, regarding the cards with the saddened gaze of one who
recalls an occupation never to be resumed. "You see, you dropped all
such work when new things come in. I kept right on because he wanted me
to."

Aunt Ann was abundantly interested and amused.

"Well, now, if ever!" she repeated over and over again. "If this don't
carry me back! Seems if I could hear the wheel hummin' an' gramma Balch
steppin' back an' forth as stiddy as a clock. It's been a good while
sence I've thought o' such old days."

"If it's old days you want"--began Amelia, and she sped upstairs with a
fresh light of resolution in her eyes.

It was a long time before she returned,--so long that aunt Ann exhausted
the still, and turned again to her thrifty knitting. Then there came a
bumping noise on the stairs, and Amelia's shuffling tread.

"What under the sun be you doin' of?" cal