love with that sick woman
that hadn't walked a step for years, and how he married her against
her father's will, and took her 'way off to Florence, the same place
where Henrietta and Archibald went when they was in Europe, and where
Henrietta got that quilt pattern for me. And she told how kind he was
to her, and how he'd git up in the mornin' and gether roses and put
'em by her bed so they'd be the first things she'd look at when she
opened her eyes. And thinks I to myself, 'Most men wants a woman that
can cook for 'em and sew for 'em and clean up after 'em, and Brownin'
must 'a' been a mighty good man to marry a woman that couldn't do
anything for him but jest love him.' Somehow I can't git the thought
o' Brownin' out o' my head. He must 'a' been mighty different from the
common run o' men, and his life don't need interpretin' like his
poetry does.

"Maybe you wonder, honey, how a old woman like me could enjoy bein' at
a Brownin' Club, and I reckon I was as much out o' place as mother's
old spinnin'-wheel that Henrietta had in one corner of her parlor
along with all that fine furniture and the fine things she'd brought
from Europe. But, then, I couldn't feel a bit bad, for there set
Henrietta, my child's child; she had everything I hadn't had, and I
jest laughed to myself, and thinks I, 'I'm livin' again in my children
and my grandchildren, and I ain't missed a thing.'"

Aunt Jane paused for breath and leaned back in her chair, smiling and
smoothing down her gingham apron. I waited in silence, for I knew that
the near memories of her visit to her beloved grandchild were as vivid
and interesting to her as the far memories of girlhood and young
womanhood, and the tide of recollections would soon flow again.

"Well, the next thing we went to was a big meetin' of women from all
sorts o' clubs. When Henrietta told me what it was, I says to myself,
'Now, I'll see if what Uncle Billy Bascom told me is the truth or
not.' Uncle Billy'd been sent up to the legislature twice from our
district, and when I heard he'd been elected the second time, I
couldn't help thinkin' about what Sam Amos used to say, that when
folks got tired seein' a man around and wanted to git shed of him a
while, they always sent him to the legislature. That's about the way
it was with Uncle Billy.

"Me and Uncle Billy has always been good friends, and after he got
back home he come around to see me, and when we'd shook hands and
inquired about each o