She stood still a moment longer, turning this unexpected announcement in her mind. Then, without another word, she went back to the kitchen and took up the plate containing Uncle Watty's breakfast, which she had left on the stove to keep warm. He could eat it cold for once, she resolved, as she passed through the room. Doris, humming over her sewing, and looking now and then down the big road, did not see what her mother was doing. Strong, active, Sidney swiftly gained the loft, making as little noise as possible. Uncle Watty's bedchamber was a corner of the loft cut off from the rest by a rough partition, and she approached the door of it with noiseless caution. Uncle Watty never thought of locking or even of shutting it, but Sidney, after setting the breakfast on the floor, inside the door, now closed it softly and turned the key. There was an old chest sitting near by, and this she managed to drag across the door without much noise. Then she listened for a space, with her ear against the door, to make sure that Uncle Watty was still fast asleep, and to consider the security of the barricade. Satisfied now that all was secure, that he could not get out, however hard he might try, she went downstairs, feeling that she had done her utmost for Uncle Watty as well as for Doris. She was faithful in her service to her husband's brother; she had accepted him as a sacred legacy when her burden was already heavy enough. She had never allowed the fact that he would not do anything for his own support to affect her regard for him, nor to lessen her efforts to provide for him; she had never minded his whittling, nor his mis-set leg, except to be sorry for him. And yet, notwithstanding all this, she, with her shrewd common sense, saw no good that it could do him, or Doris, or anybody, for him to come bumping and stumbling down the ladder just at the time when the young gentleman from Boston was likely to be calling upon Doris. Recalling the likeness to his game-making grandmother, which had struck her as so marked on the previous day--which had indeed impressed her as being of "the very same cut of the jib," as Sidney phrased it to herself--she made up her mind, then and there, that he should see no reason to laugh at Doris or Doris's kin, if she could help his seeing Uncle Watty.