“I’ll try it and see; but I wish to the land the moths _had_ eat the pinning-blanket, and then I could have used it. Lovey worked the scallops on the aidge for me. My grief! what int’rest she took in my baby clothes! Little Jot was born at Thanksgiving time, and she come over from Skowhegan, where Reuben was settled pastor of his first church. I shall never forget them two weeks to the last day of my life. There was deep snow on the ground. I had that chamber there, with the door opening into this setting-room. Mother and father Bascom kep’ out in the dining-room and kitchen, where the work was going on, and Lovey and the baby and me had the front part of the house to ourselves, with Jot coming in on tiptoe, heaping up wood in the fireplaces so ’t he ’most roasted us out. He don’t forget his chores in time o’ sickness. “I never took so much comfort in all my days. Jot got one of the Billings girls to come over and help in the housework so ’t I could lay easy ’s long as I wanted to; and I never had such a rest before nor since. There ain’t any heaven in the book o’ Revelations that’s any better than them two weeks was. I used to lay quiet in my good feather bed, fingering the pattern of my best crochet quilt, and looking at the fire-light shining on Lovey and the baby. She’d hardly leave him in the cradle a minute. When I didn’t want him in bed with me, she’d have him in her lap. Babies are common enough to most folks, but Lovey was diff’rent. She’d never had any experience with children, either, for we was the youngest in our family; and it wa’n’t long before we come near being the oldest, too, for mother buried seven of us before she went herself. Anyway, I never saw nobody else look as she done when she held my baby. I don’t mean nothing blasphemious when I say ’twas for all the world like your photograph of Mary, the mother of Jesus. “The nights come in early, so it was ’most dark at four o’clock. The little chamber was so peaceful! I could hear Jot rattling the milk-pails, but I’d draw a deep breath o’ comfort, for I knew the milk would be strained and set away without my stepping foot to the floor. Lovey used to set by the fire, with a tall candle on the light-stand behind her, and a little white knit cape over her shoulders. She had the pinkest cheeks, and the longest eyelashes, and a mouth like a little red buttonhole; and when she bent over the baby, and sung to him—though his ears wa’n’t open, I guess, for his eyes wa’n’t—the tears o’ joy used to rain down my cheeks. It was pennyrial hymns she used to sing mostly, and the one I remember best was: “‘Daniel’s wisdom may I know, Stephen’s faith and spirit show; John’s divine communion feel, Moses’ meekness, Joshua’s zeal, Run like the unwearied Paul, Win the day and conquer all.