The next day I learned more from Rachel of how Paul had agonized over the death of his tiny wife ... "'she was that small you had a'most to shake out the sheets to find her,' as Josh useter say," said Rachel gravely and unhumorously ... and she told how the bereaved husband savagely fought off all his womenfolk and insisted on mothering, for a year, the baby whose birth had killed its mother. "At last he's gittin' a little cheer in his face. But every so often the gloomy fit comes over him like it did last night at supper. I keep tellin' him it ain't Christian, with her dead two years a'ready--but he won't listen ... he's got to have his fit out each time." * * * * * As if this had not been enough of the tragic, the next day when I asked about Phoebe, Aunt Rachel started crying. "Phoebe's gone, too," she sobbed. "O, Aunt Rachel, I'm so sorry ... but I didn't know ... nobody told me." "That's all right, Johnnie. Somehow it relieves me to talk about Phoebe." She rose from her rocker, laid down her darning, and went to a dresser in the next room. She came out again, holding forth to me a picture ... Phoebe's picture.... A shy, small, oval, half-wild face like that of a dryad's. Her chin lifted as if she were some wood-creature listening to the approaching tread of the hunter and ready on the instant to spring forth and run along the wind.... An outdoor picture, a mere snapshot, but an accidental work of art. Voluminous leafage blew behind and above her head, splashed with the white of sunlight and the gloom of swaying shadow. "Why, she's--she's beautiful!" "Yes--got prettier and prettier every time you looked at her...." "But," and Aunt Rachel sighed, "I couldn't do nothin' with her at all. An' scoldin' an' whippin' done no good, neither. Josh useter whip her till he was blue in the face, an' she wouldn't budge. Only made her more sot and stubborner.... "--guess she was born the way she was ... she never could stay still a minute ... always fidgettin' ... when she was a little girl, even--I used to say, 'Now, look here, Phoebe,' I'd say, 'your ma 'ull give you a whole dime all at once if you'll set still jest for five minutes in that chair.' An' she'd try ... and, before sixty seconds was ticked off she'd be on her feet, sayin', 'Ma, I guess you kin keep that dime.'