e expression of it.

"There ain't a soul but you knows I've made my will, 'Melia," he said.
"There's suthin' in it for you, too."

Amelia shrank, and her eyes betrayed her terror; it was as if she could
carry on their relation together quite happily, but as soon as the
judgment of the world were challenged she must hide it away, like a
treasure in a box.

"No, Jared!" she breathed. "No, oh, no! Don't you do such a thing as
that."

Jared laughed a little, but half sadly.

"Seems kinder queer to me now," he owned, "now I see you settin' here,
only to put out your hand an' take a thing if you want it. Did Rufus
leave a will?"

Amelia shrank still smaller.

"No," she trembled; "no, he didn't leave a will."

"Well, I sha'n't change mine, 'Melia." He spoke with an ostentatious
lightness, but Amelia was aware that his mind labored in heavy seas of
old regret, buoyed by the futile hope of compensating her age for the
joys her youth had lacked. "I guess I'll let it stand as 'tis, an', long
as you don't need what I've left ye, why, you can put it into some kind
o' folderol an' enjoy it. You was always one to enjoy things."

They sat a long time at the table, and Jared took, as he said, more
coffee than was good for him, and praised the making of it. Then he
followed her about as she cleared away, and helped her a little with an
awkward hand. Amelia left the dishes in the sink.

"I won't clear up till night," she said. "We ain't talked out yet."

She led the way into the garden, and under the grape-trellis, where the
tall lilac-hedge shut them from the sight of passers-by, she gave him
old lady Knowles's great armchair, and took the little one that was hers
when she came over to sit a while with her old friend. The talk went
wandering back as if it sought the very sources of youth and life; but
somehow it touched commonplaces only. Yet Amelia had the sense, and she
was sure he had, too, of wandering there hand in hand, of finding no
surprises, but only the old things grown more dear, the old loyalties
the more abiding.

Suddenly he spoke, haltingly, voicing her own conviction.

"Don't seem but a minute, 'Melia, sence we set talkin' things over, much
as we do now. Seems if we hadn't been so fur separated all these years."

"No," said Amelia, with her beautiful sincerity, "I don't believe we
have been, Jared. Maybe that's how it is when folks die. We can't see
'em nor speak to 'em, but maybe they go right along bein