She was a little scared. She wished she could get right up and go home
to Mother. But the procession wouldn't stop . . . wouldn't stop. . . .
Aunt Hetty hung up the last bag. "There," she said, "that's all we can
do here today. Elly, you'd better run along home. The sun'll be down
behind the mountain now before you get there."
Elly snatched at the voice, at the words, at Aunt Hetty's wrinkled,
shaking old hand. She jumped up from the trunk. Something in her face
made Aunt Hetty say, "Well, you look as though you'd most dropped to
sleep there in the sun. It does make a person feel lazy this first warm
March sun. I declare this morning I didn't want to go to work
house-cleaning. I wanted to go and spend the day with the hens, singing
over that little dozy ca-a-a-a they do, in the sun, and stretch one leg
and one wing till they most broke off, and ruffle up all my feathers
and let 'em settle back very slow, and then just set."
They had started downstairs before Aunt Hetty had finished this, the
little girl holding tightly to the wrinkled old hand. How peaceful Aunt
Hetty was! Even the smell of her black woolen dresses always had a
quiet smell. And she must see all those hunks of mud on the white
stairs, but she never said a word. Elly squeezed her hand a little
tighter.
What was it she had been thinking about on the hair-trunk that made her
so glad to feel Aunt Hetty peaceful? Oh yes, that Mother had been there,
where she was, when she was a little girl. Well, gracious! What of that?
She'd always known that Mother had visited Aunt Hetty a lot and that
Aunt Hetty had been awfully good to her, and that Mother loved Aunt
Hetty like everything. What had made it seem so queer, all of a sudden?
"Well," said Aunt Hetty at the front door, "step along now. I don't want
you should be late for supper." She tipped her head to look around the
edge of the top of the door and said, "Well, I declare, just see that
moon showing itself before ever the sun gets down."
She walked down the path a little way with Elly, who still held her
hand. They stood together looking up at the mountain, very high and blue
against the sky that was green . . . yes, it really was a pale, clear
green, at the top of the mountain-line. People always said the sky was
blue, except at sunset-time, like now, when it was filling the Notch
right to the top with every color that could be.