"She's a real good woman, Em'ly," he said several times, "and you'll be glad to know she's makin' me more comfortable than I been in some time. I was gittin' pretty tired. Seems like I might as well let this old spinster stay on here and keep house fer me; she plumb likes it and I reckon it's just one little thing more I kin do fer the sex. I ain't much good at lonin' it, and 'tain't like I had old Miner now fer the in betweens." And then he would laugh silently until the wrinkles in his old face seemed little channels for merriment: "I been married so frequent and got broke in to so many different sets of housekeepin' ways, seems like I ain't troubled to form no ways of my own." And in between dozing and talking to himself and the neighbours, who ran in to inquire for his health, Uncle Ambrose used to spend some time in reading his Bible. One afternoon when Elizabeth had been sitting by his bedside sewing and thinking him asleep, he suddenly rose up in bed as though completely ignoring the pain in his back and drawing his old Bible across the coverlid opened it again at the place of the pressed flowers. "'Lizabeth," he asked after a moment of uncommon gravity in which his hand frequently glided over his bald crown, "are you a good Bible woman? I mean are you a good interpreter of the Scriptures? Seems like I didn't used to look to others fer the meanin' in things, but I'm gittin' a leetle mite older and folks is pretty apt to confuse wishes with facts----" But Elizabeth's austere face, with its rigid regard for set duties, was reddening. "I read my chapter every night and I try to live accordin'," she answered. Then into Uncle Ambrose's old voice there crept such an eagerness it might have held the warm desire of youth: "Mebbe you kin tell me then--the meanin' of this here Bible text. I ain't never regarded it for seventy years, but I been worryin' over it consider'ble of late, and now I'd like to get a woman's views on it." And with his trembling forefinger following the lines he had read to himself on the evening before Elizabeth's installation he said: "It is what Jesus remarked to the Sadducees: 'For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.'" And here Uncle Ambrose's eyes travelled wistfully toward the faded daguerreotype on his side wall. Naturally his listener was puzzled, but afterward laughed a laugh with a touch of new humour in it. "Lord! Uncle Ambrose, I _am_ sorry," she apologized, "but I ain't had cause to worry over that text same as you have; bein's as I'm turned fifty now and ain't had so much as _one_ husband on this earth, I'm kind of expectin' to carry my same single blessedness along with me on the t'other side."