“No, of course--_Now you stop it!_--but it looked kind o’ curious to me, your pikin’ off like that, without waitin’ to say ‘How-d’-do?’ Of course, I never had no relation by marriage that was stuck-up at all, or looked down on me--_Stiddy there now!_--but I guess I can reelize pretty much how you feel about it. I’m a good deal of a hand at that. It’s what they call imagination. It’s a gift, you know, like good looks, or preachin’, or the knack o’ makin’ money. But you can’t help what you’re born with, can you? I’d been a heap better off if my gift’d be’n in some other direction; but, as I tell ’em, it ain’t my fault. And my imagination--_Hi, there! git over, will ye?_--it’s downright cur’ous sometimes, how it works. Now I could tell, you see, that you ‘n’ S’reny didn’t pull together. I s’pose she never writ a line to you, when your husband was killed?” “Why should she?” demanded Em. “We never did correspond. What’d be the sense of beginning then? She minds her affairs, ’n’ I mind mine. Who wanted her to write?” “Oh, of course not,” said Si lightly. “Prob’ly you’ll get along better together, though, now that you’ll see more of one another. I s’pose S’reny’s figurin’ on stayin’ here right along now, her ’n’ her little girl. Well, it’ll be nice for the old folks to have somebody they’re fond of. They jest worshipped the ground Alvy walked on--and I s’pose they won’t be anything in this wide world too good for that little girl of his. Le’s see, she must be comin’ on three now, ain’t she?” “I don’t know anything about her!” snapped Aunt Em with emphasis. “Of course, it’s natural the old folks should feel so--she bein’ Alvy’s child. I hain’t noticed anything special, but does it--_Well, I swan! Hyst there!_--does it seem to you that they’re as good to Marcellus, quite, as they used to be? I don’t hear ’em sayin’ nothin’ about his goin’ to school next winter.” Aunt Em said nothing, too, but milked doggedly on. Si told her about the thickness and profusion of Serena’s mourning, guardedly hinting at the injustice done him by not allowing him to go to the red barn with the others, speculated on the likelihood of the Wadsworths’ contributing to their daughter’s support, and generally exhibited his interest in the family through a monologue which finished only with the milking; but Aunt Em made no response whatever. When the last pails had been emptied into the big cans at the door--Marcellus and I had let the cows out one by one into the yard, as their individual share in the milking ended--Si and Em saw old Arphaxed wending his way across from the house to the red barn. He appeared more bent than ever, but he walked with a slowness which seemed born of reluctance even more than of infirmity.