She took the glass from her eyes, and holdin’ it in her hand a minute, she stood looking down at it, then she gave a kind of start-like, and she holds it out to the man, and she said slowly, each word kind of by itself, ‘I thank you, sir, it is a good glass,’ and she turned and walked a step or two, and then without a sound, fell all her length, upon the ground. They carried her to her home, but Aunt Anna was taken to another house and cared for, and there she told how she had not been strong enough to refuse them, when they had entreated, and the people who invited them were old friends of hers, and would, she knew, be very careful; but where she took on the worst, was when she told about how the dog had to be tied, to keep him from following them. The ladies feared he might jump into the water and get in the boat again and spoil their dresses; and he fought like mad to get loose, and howled and barked his voice clean away. And I haven’t no doubt but he’d a saved one of ’em, for he was that strong, and a regular water-dog, and he’d brought the boy out against his will more than once, when people had sent him after Phil just for fun. Well, Aunt Anna was afraid of her life to meet Mrs. Worden, but she needn’t have been, for she hardly noticed her when she did see her. The doctors that come that time didn’t like her doin’s at all. She never cried a minute. That’s the truth, and she had seen her own and only children go to the bottom of the lake hand in hand. People that went there cried; the help just cried buckets full, and she looked at ’em, and one day she said: ‘I wonder how they do it? I can’t!’ and the doctor, once he got kind of mad-like, and he says: ‘Bend, woman, bend, or you’re bound to break! Do you think you have the strength to bear this blow as you bore the other one?’ but she only answered calmly: ‘I am what I am! I did not make myself.’ When he left he felt all upsot and he was cross as a bear with a sore head, and he said when Aunt Anna came up to ask about her, ‘She will cry, or die, or go mad; and the last looks the likeliest to me,’ and off he went. The minister he tried what he could do. He was a pudgy, kind-hearted man, and he had young children of his own, and he tried to talk resignation and that sort of thing, and she jest said to him when he got good and through, ‘Has _your_ house been made desolate to you in one hour?’ and he jest burst right out crying, and he says, ‘Ah! you poor woman, how can you bear it?’ and she jumped from her chair and lifted up her face, and beating on her breast with both her clinched fists, she almost screamed out: ‘Bear it? Bear it? Why I--’ she stopped right in a minute and she sat down and said, ‘You will pardon me, won’t you? But, see now, you have little ones, yours, your own blood in their veins, and you can imagine, can’t you, the hunger, the agony of hunger I suffer for a sight of my little ones’ faces? I could wait a thousand years if only I could see them then, but