t harp on that one string--well, suz!"

Mrs. Pray nodded her head solemnly.

"I said that," she returned. "I said that to Jonathan when I come home
from the Circle the day they was here talkin' over the fund an' settlin'
what they'd do. I come home an' says to Jonathan wipin' his hands on
the roller-towel there by the back door, I says, 'What's everybody got
ag'inst growin' old, an' growin' hefty, too, for that matter?' I says.
'Seems if folks don't talk about nothin' else.'"

Martha put in her assuaging word.

"Well, I guess human natur' ain't changed much. I guess nobody ever
hankered after gettin' stiff j'ints an' losin' their eyesight an' so.
'Twould be a queer kind of a shay that was lookin' for'ard to goin' to
pieces while 'twas travelin' along. Mis' Denny's niece that reads in
public read me that piece once. I thought 'twas about the cutest that
ever was."

Ellen Bayliss had laid her sewing on her knee, and now she looked up in
an impulsive haste, the color in her cheeks and a quick moving note in
her voice.

"It isn't growing old that's the trouble. It's talking about it. Why,
the night after that meeting of the Circle--" She stopped here, and her
eyes, widening and growing darker in a way they had, gave her face
almost a look of terror.

"What is it, Ellen?" asked Martha Waterman kindly. "You tell it right
out."

"Why," said Ellen, "this is all 'twas. That night at supper, my Nellie
kept staring at me across the table. 'What is 't, Nellie?' I says, at
last. Then she colored up and says, not as if she wanted to, but as if
she couldn't help it, 'I hope I shall look like you sometime, aunt
Ellen.' You see how 'twas. She meant, when she was old. She never in her
life had thought anything about me being old, and they'd put it into her
head."

A pained look settled upon her face, and before she took up her sewing
again she glanced from one to another as if to ask them if they really
understood. There was a little warm murmur of assent. Ellen was beloved,
and there was, besides, a concurrent strain of sympathy through the
assembly who had known all her past. They remembered how Colonel Hadley
had "gone with her" awhile when she was teaching school at District
Number Four, and how Ellen had faded out, the summer he was married to
Kate Leighton, of the Leightons on the hill. Now his nephew, Clyde, was
going with Ellen's niece in a way that vividly mirrored the old time,
and they had heard that the colonel, w