"If I've asked you once to come and live with me, I've asked you fifty times," grumbled the old lady, sitting down with a good deal of flutter and rustle. "There I must stay, left alone at my age, with nobody but that old goose of a Direxia Hawkes to look after me. And all because you like to be independent. Set you up! Well, I sha'n't ask you again, and so I've come to tell you, Mary Jaquith." "Dear old friend, you forgive me, I know. You never can have thought for a moment, seriously, that I could be a burden on your kind hands. There surely is some one with you, Mrs. Tree! Is it Direxia? Please be seated, whoever it is." She turned her beautiful face and clear, quiet eyes toward the door. There was a slight sound, as of a sob checked in the outbreak. Mrs. Tree shook her head, fiercely. The blind woman rose from her seat, very pale. "Who is it?" she said. "Be kind, please, and tell me." "I'm going to tell you," said Mrs. Tree, "if you will have patience for two minutes, and not drive every idea out of my head with your questions. Mary, I--I had a visitor last night. Some one came to see me--an old acquaintance--who had--who had heard of Willy lately. Willy is--doing well, my dear. Now, Mary Jaquith, if you don't sit down, I won't say another word. Of all the unreasonable women I ever saw in my life--" Mrs. Tree stopped, and rose abruptly from her seat. The blind woman was holding out her arms with a heavenly gesture of appeal, of welcome, of love unutterable: her face was the face of an angel. Another moment, and her son's arms were round her, and her head on his bosom, and he was crying over and over again, "Mother! mother! mother!" as if he could not have enough of the word. "Arthur was a nice boy, too!" said Mrs. Tree, as she closed the door behind her. * * * * * Five minutes later, Mrs. Weight, hurrying up the plank walk which led to the Widow Jaquith's door, was confronted by the figure of her opposite neighbor, sitting on the front doorstep, leaning her chin on her stick, and looking, as Mrs. Weight told the deacon afterward, like Satan's grandmother. "Want to see Mary Jaquith?" asked Mrs. Tree. "Well, she's engaged, and you can't. Here! give me your arm, Viny, and take me over to the girls'. I want to see how Phoebe is this morning. She was none too spry yesterday." CHAPTER VI. THE NEW POSTMASTER Politics had little hold in Elmerton. When any question of public interest was to be settled, the elders of the village met and settled it; if they disagreed among themselves, they went to Mrs. Tree, and she told them what to do. People sometimes wondered what would happen when Mrs. Tree died, but there seemed no immediate danger of this. "Truth and Trees live forever!" was the saying in the village.