“It is a village, but not quite like other villages. I have told you often about the Shaker Settlement, where your grandmother brought me once when I was just your age. There was a thunder-storm; they kept us all night, and were so kind that I never forgot them. Then your grandmother and I stopped off once when we were going to Boston. I was ten then, and I remember more about it. The same sweet Eldress was there both times.” “What is an El-der-ess, Mardie?” “A kind of everybody's mother, she seemed to be,” Susanna responded, with a catch in her breath. “I'd 'specially like her; will she be there now, Mardie?” “I'm hoping so, but it is eighteen years ago. I was ten and she was about forty, I should think.” “Then o' course she'll be dead,” said Sue, cheerfully, “or either she'll have no teeth or hair.” “People don't always die before they are sixty, Sue.” “Do they die when they want to, or when they must?” “Always when they must; never, never when they want to,” answered Sue's mother. “But o' course they would n't ever want to if they had any little girls to be togedder with, like you and me, Mardie?” And Sue looked up with eyes that were always like two interrogation points, eager by turns and by turns wistful, but never satisfied. “No,” Susanna replied brokenly, “of course they would n't, unless sometimes they were wicked for a minute or two and forgot.” “Do the Shakers shake all the time, Mardie, or just once in a while? And shall I see them do it?” “Sue, dear, I can't explain everything in the world to you while you are so little; you really must wait until you're more grown up. The Shakers don't shake and the Quakers don't quake, and when you're older, I'll try to make you understand why they were called so and why they kept the name.” “Maybe the El-der-ess can make me understand right off now; I'd 'specially like it.” And Sue ran breathlessly along to the gate where the North Family House stood in its stately, white-and-green austerity. Susanna followed, and as she caught up with the impetuous Sue, the front door of the house opened and a figure appeared on the threshold. Mother and child quickened their pace and went up the steps, Susanna with a hopeless burden of fear and embarrassment clogging her tongue and dragging at her feet; Sue so expectant of new disclosures and fresh experiences that her face beamed like a full moon.