‘Jane Peebles! Jane Peebles! you’re wanted right off, up to the Fifes’, and Hiram too; Hannah she’s took worse, and Maria she’s no more use than a babe unborn. I’m on my way up there now,’ concluded the Widder Luke, as she hurried up the hill. When Rita and Nan went to say good-bye to Maria, a few days later, Maria clung to them. She had begun to like these new friends who had taken it upon themselves to try and do for her what Mrs. Grant would have done had she been there. She followed them to the door, and said, in a whisper: ‘I asked Hannah, only the day before her last shock, whether she _did_ have any gilt-edged china, and she sort of nodded. Then I asked her if we had a blue sofy, and she nodded again; but come to think it over by myself, I don’t think it really meant anything, because you know Hannah couldn’t do anything else but nod after she had that first stroke; she couldn’t shake her head; but I thought I would tell you, you have been so kind and you seemed so interested.’ Out on the stone wall at the Corners Nan and Rita sat and laughed and cried; the tragedy and the comedy appealed to them, and not even when Nan said, as they walked down to Jane Peebles’ house, ‘All the same, _I saw the Little Room_,’ and Rita said, ‘_I saw the china-closet_,’ did they feel any bitterness. ‘Good-bye,’ said Hiram; ‘I’m real glad you came, and I want you to tell Miss Grant, when you write to her, that Hiram--she’ll remember Hiram fast enough--Hiram is going to marry Jane Peebles, and that Maria shan’t never want for a home so long as Jane can make huckleberry pies.’ ‘Oh, we are so glad; and you will send us a piece of wedding-cake, won’t you?’ ‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Hiram. ‘Won’t you please tell us what you started to that time when Miss Hannah was taken worse so suddenly? we do so want to know whether there was a room or a china-closet there on the north side.’ ‘I do remember now that I started in to tell you that; it wan’t much anyhow, only when their Grandfather Keys built the house he boasted that he intended to build the _en_tire house of timber that hadn’t a knot in it. He spent ten years a-gettin’ the timber ready, and when it was done he found that right in the front-room closet they had put a piece of board with a great knot in it. He was dreadful mad, but he kept it there all the same--on purpose, he said, to show folks it wan’t no use to set out to do anythin’ perfect in this world.’ ‘Then there was a china-closet--’ ‘Wall, yes, there certainly was a closet there.’ ‘Oh, Nan!’ said Rita, as the cars moved away from where Hiram stood, ‘he didn’t say exactly what kind of a closet even then.’ ‘No; but we can write to Jane and ask her to answer our questions with just yes or no. When she is Mrs. Hiram (I wonder if he ever had a last name) she will get it out of him if we can only interest her.’ * * * * *