I will have to study a
heap before, I can make up my mind." She moved her hands about
before her in a dazed, helpless way.

During the rest of the visit she was silent and distraught. Twice
at dinner her shaking hands knocked over her coffee-cup, and once
the sorghum-pitcher, little fair-haired Evy cleaning up quietly
after her granny, and placing things to her hand so deftly and
furtively that she did not know it was done at all, while on her
other side sat Marthy, ever kind, solicitous, and patient, and at
the far end of the table John vied with her in unobtrusive but
loving attentions to "maw." Never had "the women" seen an elderly
or afflicted person more tenderly and devotedly cared for. But the
object of it all sat rigid, self-absorbed, frowning, as oblivious to
the light and warmth of love as to the light of day, her sole
remarks being contemptuous apologies for Marthy's cooking, and
complaints of the hardship of having to "gum it," or eat without
teeth.

One week later there was a call from the road in front of the school
hospital, and Miss Shippen was pleased and relieved to see Aunt
Dalmanutha mounted on a nag behind John. In her black calico
sunbonnet and dress, and long, drab apron, with her hand tightly
clutched to John's arm, and dark apprehension written upon her blind
face, she was indeed a pitiable sight.

"I have pondered your words," she said to Miss Shippen, "and have
made up my mind to foller them. With naught but them to swing out
on, I am setting forth into the unknown. I that hain't never so
much as rid in a wagon, am about to dare the perils of the railroad;
that hain't been twenty mile' from home in all my days, am
journeying into a far and absent country, from which the liabilities
are I won't never return. Far'well, if far'well it be!"

On the last day of October, Miss Shippen had just dismissed her
seventh-grade class in home-nursing, and was standing in the
hospital porch drinking in the unspeakable autumnal glory of the
mountains, when a wagon, rumbling and groaning along the road and
filled with people, stopped with a lurch at the gate. Advancing,
the nurse was at first puzzled as to the identity of the people;
then she recognized the faces of John and Marthy Holt and of little
Evy. But for several seconds she gazed without recognition at the
striking figure on the front seat beside John. This figure wore a
remarkable hat, bristling with red, yellow, and green flowe