"Before long, I guess. Mother said maybe he'd be back here next month." Elly was aware that she was again not being talkative. She tried to think of something to add. "I'm very much obliged for these cookies," she said. "They are awfully good." "They're the kind your mother always liked, when she was your age," said Aunt Hetty casually. "I remember how she used to sit right there on Father's hair-trunk and eat them and watch me just like you now." At this statement Elly could feel her thoughts getting bigger and longer and higher, like something being opened out. "And the heaven was removed as a scroll when it is rolled up." That sentence she'd heard in church and never understood, and always wondered what was behind, what they had seen when the scroll was rolled up. . . . Something inside her now seemed to roll up as though she were going to see what was behind it. How much longer time was than you thought! Mother had sat there as a little girl . . . a little girl like her. Mother who was now grown-up and _finished_, knowing everything, never changing, never making any mistakes. Why, how _could_ she have been a little girl! And such a short time ago that Aunt Hetty remembered her sitting there, right there, maybe come in from walking across that very meadow, and down those very rocks. _What had she been thinking about, that other little girl who had been Mother?_ "Why" . . . Elly stopped eating, stopped breathing for a moment. "Why, she herself would stop being a little girl, and would grow up and be a Mother!" She had always known that, of course, but she had never _felt_ it till that moment. It made her feel very sober; more than sober, rather holy. Yes, that was the word,--holy,--like the hymn. Perhaps some day another little girl would sit there, and be just as surprised to know that _her_ mother had been really and truly a little girl too, and would feel queer and shy at the idea, and all the time her mother had been only _Elly_. But would she _be_ Elly any more, when she was grown up? What would have happened to Elly? And after that little girl, another; and one before Mother; and back as far as you could see, and forwards as far as you could see. It was like a procession, all half in the dark, marching forward, one after another, little girls, mothers, mothers and little girls, and then more . . . what for . . . oh, _what for?_ She was a little scared. She wished she could get right up and go _home_ to Mother. But the procession wouldn't stop . . . wouldn't stop. . . . Aunt Hetty hung up the last bag. "There," she said, "that's all we can do here today. Elly, you'd better run along home. The sun'll be down behind the mountain _now_ before you get there."