led her aunt, listening, with
her head on one side. "Don't you fall, 'Melia! Whatever 't is, I can't
help ye."

But the stairway door yielded to pressure from within: and first a rim
of wood appeared, and then Amelia, scarlet and breathless, staggering
under a spinning-wheel.

"Forever!" ejaculated aunt Ann, making one futile effort to rise, like
some cumbersome fowl whose wings are clipped. "My land alive! you'll
break a blood-vessel, an' then where'll ye be?"

Amelia triumphantly drew the wheel to the middle of the floor, and then
blew upon her dusty hands and smoothed her tumbled hair. She took off
her apron and wiped the wheel with it rather tenderly, as if an ordinary
duster would not do.

"There!" she said. "Here's some rolls right here in the bedroom. I
carded them myself, but I never expected to spin any more."

She adjusted a roll to the spindle, and, quite forgetting aunt Ann,
began stepping back and forth in a rhythmical march of feminine service.
The low hum of her spinning filled the air, and she seemed to be wrapped
about by an atmosphere of remoteness and memory. Even aunt Ann was
impressed by it; and once, beginning to speak, she looked at Amelia's
face, and stopped. The purring silence continued, lulling all lesser
energies to sleep, until Amelia, pausing to adjust her thread, found her
mood broken by actual stillness, and gazed about her like one awakened
from dreams.

"There!" she said, recalling herself. "Ain't that a good smooth thread?
I've sold lots of yarn. They ask for it in Sudleigh."

"'Tis so!" confirmed aunt Ann cordially. "An' you've al'ays dyed it
yourself, too!"

"Yes, a good blue; sometimes tea-color. There, now, you can't say you
ain't heard a spinnin'-wheel once more!"

Amelia moved the wheel to the side of the room, and went gravely back to
her chair. Her energy had fled, leaving her hushed and tremulous. But
not for that did aunt Ann relinquish her quest for the betterment of the
domestic world. Her tongue clicked the faster as Amelia's halted. She
put away her work altogether, and sat, with wagging head and eloquent
hands, still holding forth on the changes which might be wrought in the
house: a bay window here, a sofa there, new chairs, tables, and
furnishings. Amelia's mind swam in a sea of green rep, and she found
herself looking up from time to time at her mellowed four walls, to see
if they sparkled in desirable yet somewhat terrifying gilt paper.

At four o'clock,