"An' then she looked at him like he was lookin' at her. An' it come to me how it'd been with them two since the night they'd locked up my house together. An' I felt all hushed up, like the weddin' was beginnin'. "But Timothy an' Silas, they wa'n't feelin' so hushed. 'Look a-here!' says Timothy Toplady, all pent up. 'She ain't discharged from the county house yet.' "'I don't care a _dum_,' says Eb, an' I must say I respected him for the 'dum'--that once. "'Look a-here,' says Silas, without a bit o' delicacy. 'She ain't responsible. She ain't--' "'She is too,' Eb cut him short. 'She's just as responsible as anybody can be when they're lonesome enough to die. _I_ ought 'a' know that. Shut up, Silas Sykes,' says Eb, all het up. 'You've just et a hot breakfast your wife hed ready for you. You don't know what you're talkin' about.' "An' then Eb sort o' swep' us all up in the dust-pan. "'No more words about it,' s'he, 'an' I don't care what any one o' you says--Mis' Cally nor _none_ o' you. So you might just as well say less. Tell 'em, Elspie!' "She looked up at him, smilin' a little, an' he turned toward her, like we wasn't there. An' I nudged Mis' Merriman an' made a move, an' she turns right away, like she'd fair forgot the funeral flowers. An' Timothy an' Silas actually followed us, but talkin' away a good deal--like men will. "None of us looked back from the top o' the hill, though I will own I would 'a' loved to. An' about up there I heard Silas say:-- "'Oh, well. I _am_ gettin' kind o' old an' some stiff to take a new business on myself.' "An' Timothy, he adds absent: 'I don't s'pose, when you come right down to it, as Alice County'll rilly care a whoop.' "An' Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, she wipes up her eyes, an', 'It does seem like courtin' with Sum's flowers,' she says, sighin', 'but I'm rill glad for Eb.' "An' Eb not bein' there to agree with her, I says to myself, lookin' at the mornin' sun on the cemetery an' thinkin' o' them two back there among the baskets an' set pieces--I says, low to myself:-- "'Oh, glory, glory, glory.' "For I tell you, when you see a livin' soul born in somebody's eyes, it makes you feel pretty sure you can hev one o' your own, if you try." XII OF THE SKY AND SOME ROSEMARY When the Friendship Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality had its Evening Benefit at my house, Delia More came to help in the kitchen. She steadfastly refused to be a guest. "I'd love bein' 'round there," she said, "over the stove, or that way. But I can't--_can't_ be company--yet. When I think of it, it's like a high swing."