People don't always die before they are sixty, Sue."

"Do they die when they want to, or when they must?"

"Always when they must; never, never when they want to," answered Sue's
mother.

"But o' course they would n't ever want to if they had any little girls
to be togedder with, like you and me, Mardie?" And Sue looked up with
eyes that were always like two interrogation points, eager by turns and
by turns wistful, but never satisfied.

"No," Susanna replied brokenly, "of course they would n't, unless
sometimes they were wicked for a minute or two and forgot."

"Do the Shakers shake all the time, Mardie, or just once in a while? And
shall I see them do it?"

"Sue, dear, I can't explain everything in the world to you while you are
so little; you really must wait until you're more grown up. The Shakers
don't shake and the Quakers don't quake, and when you're older, I'll
try to make you understand why they were called so and why they kept the
name."

"Maybe the El-der-ess can make me understand right off now; I'd
'specially like it." And Sue ran breathlessly along to the gate where
the North Family House stood in its stately, white-and-green austerity.

Susanna followed, and as she caught up with the impetuous Sue, the front
door of the house opened and a figure appeared on the threshold. Mother
and child quickened their pace and went up the steps, Susanna with
a hopeless burden of fear and embarrassment clogging her tongue and
dragging at her feet; Sue so expectant of new disclosures and fresh
experiences that her face beamed like a full moon.

Eldress Abby (for it was Eldress Abby) had indeed survived the heavy
weight of her fifty-five or sixty summers, and looked as if she might
reach a yet greater age. She wore the simple Shaker afternoon dress of
drab alpaca; an irreproachable muslin surplice encircled her straight,
spare shoulders, while her hair was almost entirely concealed by the
stiffly wired, transparent white-net cap that served as a frame to the
tranquil face. The face itself was a network of delicate, fine wrinkles;
but every wrinkle must have been as lovely in God's sight as it was in
poor unhappy Susanna Hathaway's. Some of them were graven by self-denial
and hard work; others perhaps meant the giving up of home, of parents
and brothers or sisters; perhaps some worldly love, the love that Father
Adam bequeathed to the human family, had been slain in Abby's youth, and
the scars still remained to s