Her daughter, who had been deserted by a husband as soon as she gave him a child to support, came to the funeral, and remained to make an unlimited visit and pick up such wearing apparel and other comforts as we had given Aunt Lizy. She took entire possession of the house, being as loud-voiced and self-assertive as her mother was crushed and sensitive. But she owned me before everybody as her cousin, and took notice of Julian, though she preferred Irish society in the kitchen, and installed me as her nurse, while she enjoyed it. The baby’s usual expression was that of a young bird when it hears the parent return to the nest with a full beak. I used to sit studying the interior of the poor child’s throat, while its voice pierced my marrow. Julian made a sketch of the pimply little face, but finished it up with a black cat’s body and a high fence. It cried steadily during its stay, and had the croup and the doctor and our sleep, until Julian said he must follow the excusable example of its father and abandon it. He paid the fare of Aunt Lizy’s daughter to relations in the far west, and loaded her with whatever she fancied her mother’s. Yet she probably thought we shirked kinsmen’s duty toward her, for we have since heard the whisper that we got all that Aunt Lizy ought to have left her. So I was glad that T’férgore and not one of my own stock now dictated a postponement of the foreign trip. Next day we drove out to the little farm and saw old Lena. Julian declared she was worth driving the five miles to see, if it was only to say “Good-day, Lena,” and watch her shriveled smiles. She always wore a blue calico or blue woolen dress, low shoes, and scarlet stockings. Her gait was a cheerful trot, but her tongue was lamest at the English language of any tongue I have ever heard. She had a grandson named Fritz, tallow-colored and blue-eyed, and covered with contagious smiles. He never had forgotten the feeling of wooden shoes on his feet, and clumped conscientiously in leather. Lena and Fritz rented the little farm, and Fritz pushed the vegetables, fruit, and butter to market in a hand-cart. Summer or winter, the road, a turnpike, was as smooth and hard as a floor. Every inch of the fifteen acres was under cultivation. Such weeds as were allowed to grow had some medicinal property, or were good for feeding Lena’s birds. She had her cages hung along the porch, the two canaries, the red-bird, and the mockingbird trying to out-sing and out-chatter the wild things in the cherry-trees.