February country in New Jersey; there are clouds, and clouds, and clouds overhead; and a brook with the sun shining on it, and a bridge with a stone wall on each side, a little bit of a stone wall, and stone arches where the water flows through; perhaps it rushes because the snow is melting so fast; there’s a garden with no flowers in it yet, but there are flower stalks, and bushes, and bushes; and a path up to the kitchen door, for the garden is down in a hollow; the kitchen shines, it is so clean, and smells, oh, how it does smell of graham bread, and hot molasses cake, and cup custards, and apple pie—but we can’t smell in a picture,” she laughed.

“I can—in your pictures,” said her mother, echoing the laugh very softly.

“And the dearest old sitting-room—Aunt Rody will call it ‘the room’ as if it were the only room in the house; there’s a rag carpet on the floor—Aunt Rody dotes on rag carpets; so would I if it were not for the endless sewing of the rags—and there’s a chair with rockers, and on the top of the back of it a gilded house and trees almost rubbed off, and on the back a calico cushion tied on with red dress braid, and a calico cushion in the bottom, and the dearest old lady sits in it and sews, and talks, and reads the Bible and the magazines; there’s a chair without rockers for the old lady who never rocks or does easy pleasant things, and hates it when other people, especially little girls, do any easy pleasant thing; and there’s another chair, like an office chair, with a leather cushion for the dear old man with a rosy face like a rosy apple, and a bald head on the top, and long white whiskers that he keeps so nice they shine like silver, and make you never mind when he wants to kiss you; and there’s a high mantel with a whole world of curious things on it that came out of a hundred years ago, and a lounge with a shaggy dog on a cushion on one end of it—how Aunt Rody lets him is a wonder to me—and a round table with piles of the ‘New York Observer’ on it. And just now the sweetest lady in the world in her wine-colored wrapper is lying on the lounge and the little girl in blue is flying about helping Aunt Affy and Aunt Rody get supper—O, mother,” with a break in her voice, “how I ache to get you there and take care of you there; Cousin Don says it is the best place in the world for you and me,—we would grow fresh and green and send out oxygen like all the green things in Bensalem. I think I’d like to grow green and send out oxygen.”

“Judith, you and I are always in the best place—for us.”

“Then,” said Judith, laughing, “I’d like a place not quite so good for us—only just as good as Bensalem.”

“When I was a little girl, thirty years ago, the room was just the same, only Doodles was another Doodles, and Aunt Affy’s curls were not gray, and Uncle Cephas was not bald or white—his whiskers were red then, and he was there off and on—and the other aunties came and went—and Aunt Becky died—the friskiest Aunt Becky that ever lived. I want my little girl to grow up in the dear old house, with not a stain of the world upon her; I want to think of my little girl there with Uncle Cephas and Aunt Affy.”

Judith understood; her mother had told her she would be there without her mother; but that was to be years hence—sorrow was a long, long way off to-night to the girl who must hope or her heart would break; she brought her mother’s fingers to her lips and kissed them; she did not worry her mother now-a-days even by kissing her lips or hair.

Cousin Don said to her that afternoon he took her to walk that she must not hang over her mother, or kiss the life out of her, and above all, never cry or moan when she talked about leaving her “alone.” “Nothing makes her so strong as to see you brave,” he said, watching the effect of his caution upon her listening face.

She had tried to be brave ever since.

“You can make pictures and see