“No matter if it is midnight. Rody didn’t sleep last night. She talked in her sleep, and has been muttering all day; I wouldn’t have left her only I wanted to see the minister alone before he saw her.” The chains of the farm wagon rattled into the lane. Marion, on the piazza, watched the old lovers drive away. XXII. AUNT AFFY’S EVENING. “When He giveth quietness, who then can make trouble?” —_Job_ xxxiv. 29. “I don’t want any supper,” complained Aunt Rody, rising from the supper table and staggering toward the sitting-room door. “I’m too full to eat; too full of deceit; you are all deceiving me.” “Now, Rody,” protested Cephas, buttering his big slice of bread, with a vigorous touch. “All, every one of you,” she said with a wail, turning with a slow effort to face the supper-table; “you have deceived me all your life, and Affy has, and Joe, and Judith, and Doodles would if he knew how. Perhaps he does in a dog’s way, which isn’t half so tremendous as the human way.” Joe burst into a laugh, which Aunt Affy’s look instantly silenced. “Poor Rody,” she sighed. In the twilight, after the dishes were done, the two old sisters sat together on the piazza; Rody had insisted upon wiping the dishes, and as she sat upright in her straight-backed chair, she rubbed her fingers dry with the brown gingham apron she had forgotten to take off. She rubbed her fingers with an unceasing motion, muttering to herself. Affy looked off into the twilight, her hands still in her lap. Joe went whistling up the road to the village; Cephas, in meditative attitude, in his shirt-sleeves, with his straw hat pushed to the back of his head, leaned over the gate. “All of you, all of you,” mumbled the breaking voice, “from my youth up.” “Cephas thinks it would be a good thing to sell the milk to the Dutchman that has bought the Elting farm,” began Affy, watching the effect of her words. “Four cents a quart. And we would be saved the churning and washing all the milk things. If Joe goes away to learn a trade we shall have nobody to churn. What do you think, Rody?” The drooping head lifted itself, the fingers with the gingham fold were held with a loosening hand; sharply and shrilly Aunt Rody replied: “That’s always the way; you and Cephas are always putting your heads together to cheat me out of something. Not a quart of that milk shall go. Joe shall stay and churn. Mother never sold her milk to a Dutchman for four cents a quart. What would we do for butter, I’d like to know.” “Buy it.” “Buy it,” she repeated, mockingly; “nobody on the Sparrow place ever paid money for butter.” “But Cephas thinks—,” began Aunt Affy, patiently. “Tell Cephas to stop thinking,” replied the weakly imperative voice.