"Till Ethie comes again." Aunt Barbara rarely said that now, for with each fleeting year the chance for Ethie's coming grew less and less, until now she seldom spoke of it to Betty, the only person to whom she ever talked of Ethie. Even with her she was usually very reticent, unless something brought the wanderer to mind more vividly than usual. Cleaning her room was such an occasion, and sitting down upon the floor, while she darned a hole in the carpet which the turning had brought to view, Aunt Barbara spoke of her darling, and the time when, a little toddling thing of two years old, she first came to the homestead, and was laid in that very room, and "on that very pillow," Aunt Barbara said, seeing again the round hollow left by the little brown head when the child awoke and stretched its fat arms toward her. "Julia, her mother, died in that bed," Aunt Barbara went on, "and Ethie always slept there after that. Well put on the sheets marked with her name, Betty, and the ruffled pillow-cases. I want it to seem as if she were here," and Aunt Barbara's chin quivered, and her eyes grew moist, as her fat, creasy hands smoothed and patted the plump pillows, and tucked in the white spread, and picked up a feather, and moved a chair, and shut the blinds, and dropped the curtains, and then she went softly out and shut the door behind her. Two weeks from that day, the soft, bland air was full of sleet, and snow, and rain, which beat down the poor daffies on the borders, and pelted the onions, and lettuce, and peas which Uncle Billy had planted, and dashed against the closed windows of Ethie's room, and came in under the door of the kitchen, and through the bit of leaky roof in the dining room, while the heavy northeaster which swept over the Chicopee hills screamed fiercely at Betty peering curiously out to see if it was going to be any kind of drying for the clothes she had put out early in the day, and then, as if bent on a mischievous frolic took from the line and carried far down the street, Aunt Barbara's short night-gown with the patch upon the sleeve. On the whole it was a bleak, raw, stormy day, and when the night shut down, the snow lay several inches deep upon the half-frozen ground, making the walking execrable, and giving to the whole village that dirty, comfortless appearance which a storm in April always does. It was pleasant, though, in Aunt Barbara's sitting room. It was always pleasant there, and it seemed doubly so to-night from the contrast presented to the world without by the white-washed ceiling, the newly whipped carpet, the clean, white curtains, and the fire blazing on the hearth, where two huge red apples were roasting. This was a favorite custom of Aunt Barbara's, roasting apples in the evening. She used to do it when Ethie was at home, for Ethie enjoyed it quite as much as she did, and when the red cheeks burst, and the white frothy pulp came oozing out, she used, as a little girl, to clap her hands and cry, "The