“Lazy! You couldn’t be lazy, Aunt Alvirah,” laughed the girl of the Red Mill.
“Oh, yes; I ‘spect I could,” said Aunt Alvirah, nodding. “This here M’lissy your uncle’s hired to help do the work, is a right capable girl. And she’s made me lazy. If I undertake ter do a thing, she’s there before me an’ has got it done.”
“You need to sit still and let others do the work now,” Ruth urged.
“I dunno. What good am I to Jabez Potter? He didn’t take me out o’ the poorhouse fifteen year or more ago jest ter sit around here an’ play lady. No, ma’am!”
“Oh, Aunty!”
“I dunno but I’d better be back there.”
“You’d better not let Uncle Jabez hear you say so,” Ruth cried. “Maybe I don’t always know just how Uncle Jabez feels about me; but I know how he looks at you, Aunt Alvirah. Don’t dare suggest leaving the Red Mill.”
The little old woman looked at her steadily, and there were the scant tears of age in the furrows of her face.
“I shall be leavin’ it some day soon, my pretty. ’Tis a beautiful place here—the Red Mill. But there is a Place Prepared. I’m on my way there, Ruthie. But, thanks be, I kin cling with one hand to the happy years here because of you, while my other hand’s stretched out for the feel of a Hand that you can’t see, my pretty. After all, Ruthie, no matter how we live, or what we do, our livin’ is jest a preparation for our dyin’.”
Nor was this lugubrious. Aunt Alvirah was no long-visaged, unhappy creature. The other girls loved to call on her. Helen was at the Red Mill this summer quite as much as ever. Jennie Stone and Rebecca Frayne both visited Ruth after their return from Freezeout Camp.