At her aunt’s table she would talk of one thing and another, asking questions of the past, of Aunt Deesie, of Prudie. Where had they gone? Was her uncle’s grave marked by a stone? She would walk out there some day when she had grown stronger. “Which do you like best, Dickens or Scott or Cooper?” she asked. “About the same, one as the other. A good love-story is what I like best. Want more bread?” There was bread and milk and a bit of meat sometimes. A pie baked before the open fire or a bit of a pudding. “When I’m better maybe you’ll have the kitchen fixed up and I’ll run it, Aunt Doe. Or we could have somebody to cook. There’s a heap to do in a farm kitchen, I know. I’ll take the bother of it any time you want....” “I’m well enough off as I am. I don’t want a big rumpus inside the house.” She dwelt on the kitchen as Prudie had kept it, the busy mornings there, the kettles steaming on the stove, to try to make it reappear as a part of a pleasant way. She remembered some droll sayings of Prudie’s talk and restored Lucas with a swiftly sketched picture. “Remember how Prudie used to say, ‘But stick inside your shirt-tail, Lucas, afore you go in to wait on white folks. Shirt-tail always out.’ Remember Prudie?” “But I like the way I got now. No bother. All I need is right here. I’m well enough off to suit me,” Miss Doe said. * * * * * The journey up the stairs required several pauses for rest on the way, and, this accomplished, she was glad to sink into the kindness of the bed. Her flesh was soft like wax. She would look at her strange hands and listen to her fluttering breath. It was spring, she reflected, seeing the swelling buds on the linden tree and hearing the birds at morning. At night the up-and-down seesaw of the frogs in the pond came to her if the breeze were drifting in from the east. Frank came sometimes, always in the late afternoons. She would talk with him on the portico where she would sit wrapped well in shawls. She worked feebly, a little at a time, and rid the parlor of its cobwebs and dust.