are into her face; that'll
bring her out of it;' and he looked at me a minute, and then he burst
out a-laughing--he couldn't help it. He's too good to her; that's the
trouble."

"You never said that to her about the dumplings?" said Aunt Polly,
admiringly. "Well, _I_ shouldn't ha' dared;" and she rocked and knitted
away faster than ever, while we all laughed. "Now with Mary Susan it's
different. I suppose she does have the neurology, and she's a poor
broken-down creature. I do feel for her more than I do for Adaline. She
was always a willing girl, and she worked herself to death, and she
can't help these notions, nor being an Ash neither."

"I'm the last one to be hard on anybody that's sick, and in trouble,"
said Mrs. Snow.

"Bless you, she set up with Ad'line herself three nights in one week, to
my knowledge. It's more'n I would do," said Aunt Polly, as if there were
danger that I should think Mrs. Snow's kind heart to be made of flint.

"It ain't what I call watching," said she, apologetically. "We both doze
off, and then when the folks come in in the morning she'll tell what a
sufferin' night she's had. She likes to have it said she has to have
watchers."

"It's strange what a queer streak there is running through the whole of
'em," said Aunt Polly, presently. "It always was so, far back's you can
follow 'em. Did you ever hear about that great-uncle of theirs that
lived over to the other side o' Denby, over to what they call the Denby
Meadows? We had a cousin o' my father's that kept house for him (he was
a single man), and I spent most of a summer and fall with her once when
I was growing up. She seemed to want company: it was a lonesome sort of
a place."

"There! I don't know when I have thought to' that," said Mrs. Snow,
looking much amused. "What stories you did use to tell, after you come
home, about the way he used to act! Dear sakes! she used to keep us
laughing till we was tired. Do tell her about him, Polly; she'll like to
hear."

"Well, I've forgot a good deal about it: you see it was much as fifty
years ago. I wasn't more than seventeen or eighteen years old. He was a
very respectable man, old Mr. Dan'el Gunn was, and a cap'n in the
militia in his day. Cap'n Gunn, they always called him. He was well off,
but he got sun-struck, and never was just right in his mind afterward.
When he was getting over his sickness after the stroke he was very
wandering, and at last he seemed to get it into his head