epping down. She
poured out of it on the table a mixture of old buttons and squash-seeds,
beside a lump of beeswax which she said she had lost, and now pocketed
with satisfaction. She wiped the tumbler on her apron and handed it to
Kate, but we were not so thirsty as we had been, though we thanked her
and went down to the spring, coming back as soon as possible, for we
could not lose a bit of the conversation.

There was a beautiful view from the doorstep, and we stopped a minute
there. "Real sightly, ain't it?" said Mrs. Bonny. "But you ought to be
here and look across the woods some morning just at sun-up. Why, the sky
is all yaller and red, and them low lands topped with fog! Yes, it's
nice weather, good growin' weather, this week. Corn and all the rest of
the trade looks first-rate. I call it a forrard season. It's just such
weather as we read of, ain't it?"

"I don't remember where, just at this moment," said Mr. Lorimer.

"Why, in the almanac, bless ye!" said she, with a tone of pity in her
grum voice; could it be possible he didn't know,--the Deephaven
minister!

We asked her to come and see us. She said she had always thought she'd
get a chance some time to see Miss Katharine Brandon's house. She should
be pleased to call, and she didn't know but she should be down to the
shore before very long. She was 'shamed to look so shif'less that day,
but she had some good clothes in a chist in the bedroom, and a boughten
bonnet with a good cypress veil, which she had when "he" died. She
calculated they would do, though they might be old-fashioned, some. She
seemed greatly pleased at Mr. Lorimer's having taken the trouble to come
to see her. All those people had a great reverence for "the minister."
We were urged to come again in "rosbry" time, which was near at hand,
and she gave us messages for some of her old customers and
acquaintances. "I believe some of those old creatur's will never die,"
said she; "why, they're getting to be ter'ble old, ain't they, Mr.
Lorimer? There! ye've done me a sight of good, and I wish I could ha'
found the Bible, to hear ye read a Psalm." When Mr. Lorimer shook hands
with her, at leaving, she made him a most reverential courtesy. He was
the greatest man she knew; and once during the call, when he was
speaking of serious things in his simple, earnest way, she had so devout
a look, and seemed so interested, that Kate and I, and Mr. Lorimer
himself, caught a new, fresh meaning in the fam