"Many's the time," she said slowly, "that I've laid awake till the chickens crowed, blamin' myself and wonderin' how far I was responsible for Milly's mishap. I've lived a long time since then, and I don't worry any more about such things. There's some things that's got to be; and when a person is all wore out tryin' to find out why this thing happened and why that thing didn't happen, he can jest throw himself back on the eternal decrees, and it's like layin' down on a good soft feather bed after you've done a hard day's work. The preachers'll tell you that every man is his brother's keeper, but 'tain't so. I ain't my brother's keeper, nor my sister's, neither. There's jest one person I've got to keep, and that's myself. "The Bible says, 'A word spoken in due season, how good it is!' But when folks is in love there ain't any due season for speakin' warnin' words to 'em. There was Emmeline Amos: her father told her if she married Hal, he'd cut her name out o' the family Bible and leave her clear out o' his will. But that didn't hinder her. She went right on and married him, and lived to rue the day she did it. No, child, there's mighty little salvation by words for folks that's in love. I reckon if a word from me would 'a' saved Milly, the word would 'a' been given to me, and the season too, and as they wasn't, why I hadn't any call to blame myself. "Abram and Sam Crawford did try to talk to Old Man Bob; but, la! you might as well 'a' talked to the east wind. All he said was, 'If Annie wants Dick Elrod, Annie shall have him.' That's what he'd been sayin' ever since Annie was born. Nobody said anything to Annie, for she was the sort o' girl who didn't care whose feelin's was tramped on, if she jest had her own way. "So it went on, and the weddin' day was set, and nothin' was talked about but Annie's first-day dress and Annie's second-day dress, and how many ruffles she had on her petticoats, and what the lace on her nightgowns cost; and all the time there was pore Milly Baker cryin' her eyes out night and day, and us women gittin' up all our old baby clothes for Dick Elrod's unborn child." Aunt Jane dropped her knitting in her lap, and gazed across the fields as if she were seeking in the sunlit ether the faces of those who moved and spoke in her story. A farm wagon came lumbering through the stillness, and she gathered up the double thread of story and knitting and went on.