"Yes," says she,--"why don't you go?"--for I had been tending him a good deal that day. "Well," says I, "there's a number of reasons; one is, I'm just binding off my heel." Lurindy looked at me a minute, then all at once she smiled. "Well, Emmy," says she, "if you like a smooth skin more than a smooth conscience, you're welcome,"--and went up-stairs herself. I suppose I had ought to 'a' gone, and I suppose I'd ought to wanted to have gone, but somehow it wasn't so much fear as that I didn't want to see Stephen himself now. So Lurindy stayed up chamber, and was there when mother and the doctor come. And the doctor said he feared Aunt Mimy was right, and nobody but mother and Lurindy must go near Stephen, (you see, he found Lurindy there,) and they must have as little communication with me as possible. And his boots creaked down the back-stairs, and then he went. Mother came down a little while after, for some water to put on Stephen's head, which was a good deal worse, she said; and about the middle of the evening I heard her crying for me to come and help them hold him,--he was raving. I didn't go very quick; I said, "Yes,--just as soon as I've narrowed off my toe"; and when at last I pushed back my chair to go, mother called in a disapproving voice and said that they'd got along without me and I'd better go to bed. Well, after I was in bed I began to remember all that had happened lately. Somehow my thoughts went back to the first time Cousin Stephen came to our place, when I was a real little girl, and mother'd sent me to the well and I had dropped the bucket in, and he ran straight down the green slippery stones and brought it up, laughing. Then I remembered how we'd birds-nested together, and nutted, and come home on the hay-carts, and how we'd been in every kind of fun and danger together; and how, when my new Portsmouth lawn took fire, at Martha Smith's apple-paring, he caught me right in his arms and squeezed out the fire with his own hands; and how, when he saw once I had a notion of going with Elder Hooper's son James, he stepped aside till I saw what a nincom Jim Hooper was, and then he appeared as if nothing had happened, and was just as good as ever; and how, when the ice broke on Deacon Smith's pond, and I fell in, and the other boys were all afraid, Steve came and saved my life again at risk of his own; and how he always seemed to think the earth wasn't good enough for me to walk on; and how I'd wished, time and again, I might have some way to pay him back; and here it was, and I'd failed him. Then I remembered how I'd been to his place in Berkshire,--a rich old farm, with an orchard that smelled like the Spice Islands in the geography, with apples and pears and quinces and peaches and cherries and plums,--and how Stephen's mother, Aunt Emeline, had been as kind to me as one's own mother could be. But now Aunt Emeline and Uncle 'Siah were dead, and Stephen came a good deal oftener over the border than he'd any right to.