"Well, I suppose it is foolish," she owned,—"too foolish to tell. But I've been settin' all his clothes in order to lay 'em aside at last. I kind o' like to do it."
Aunt Ann wagged her head, and ran a knitting-needle up under her cap on a voyage of discovery.
"You think so now," she said wisely, "but you'll see some time it's better by fur to give 'em away while ye can. The time never'll come when it's any easier. My soul, 'Melia, how I should like to git up into your chambers! It's six year now sence I've seen 'em."
Amelia laid down her work and considered the possibility.
"I don't know how in the world I could h'ist you up there," she remarked, from an evident background of hospitable good-will.
"H'ist me up? I guess you couldn't! You'd need a tackle an' falls. Amos has had to come to draggin' me round by degrees, an' I don't go off the lower floor. Be them chambers jest the same, 'Melia?"
"Oh, yes, they're just the same. Everything is. You know he didn't like changes."
"Blue spread on the west room bed?"
"Yes."
"Spinnin'-wheels out in the shed chamber, where his gran'mother Hooper kep' 'em?"