Rebecca did not see her aunt Miranda till she had been at the brick house for several days. Miranda steadily refused to have any one but Jane in the room until her face had regained its natural look, but her door was always ajar, and Jane fancied she liked to hear Rebecca's quick, light step. Her mind was perfectly clear now, and, save that she could not move, she was most of the time quite free from pain, and alert in every nerve to all that was going on within or without the house. "Were the windfall apples being picked up for sauce; were the potatoes thick in the hills; was the corn tosselin' out; were they cuttin' the upper field; were they keepin' fly-paper laid out everywheres; were there any ants in the dairy; was the kindlin' wood holdin' out; had the bank sent the cowpons?" Poor Miranda Sawyer! Hovering on the verge of the great beyond,--her body "struck" and no longer under control of her iron will,--no divine visions floated across her tired brain; nothing but petty cares and sordid anxieties. Not all at once can the soul talk with God, be He ever so near. If the heavenly language never has been learned, quick as is the spiritual sense in seizing the facts it needs, then the poor soul must use the words and phrases it has lived on and grown into day by day. Poor Miss Miranda!--held fast within the prison walls of her own nature, blind in the presence of revelation because she had never used the spiritual eye, deaf to angelic voices because she had not used the spiritual ear. There came a morning when she asked for Rebecca. The door was opened into the dim sick-room, and Rebecca stood there with the sunlight behind her, her hands full of sweet peas. Miranda's pale, sharp face, framed in its nightcap, looked haggard on the pillow, and her body was pitifully still under the counterpane. "Come in," she said; "I ain't dead yet. Don't mess up the bed with them flowers, will ye?" "Oh, no! They're going in a glass pitcher," said Rebecca, turning to the washstand as she tried to control her voice and stop the tears that sprang to her eyes. "Let me look at ye; come closer. What dress are ye wearin'?" said the old aunt in her cracked, weak voice. "My blue calico." "Is your cashmere holdin' its color?" "Yes, aunt Miranda." "Do you keep it in a dark closet hung on the wrong side, as I told ye?" "Always." "Has your mother made her jelly?" "She hasn't said." "She always had the knack o' writin' letters with nothin' in 'em. What's Mark broke sence I've been sick?" "Nothing at all, aunt Miranda." "Why, what's the matter with him? Gittin' lazy, ain't he? How 's John turnin' out?" "He's going to be the best of us all." "I hope you don't slight things in the kitchen because I ain't there. Do you scald the coffee-pot and turn it upside down on the winder-sill?" "Yes, aunt Miranda."