"I suppose it is funny," Elizabeth said, "but I never thought of it that way. I suppose it's funny about Moses keeping on asking if his mother was going to die, but it didn't seem funny at the time, it just seemed queer and—and awfully hard to manage. I—I——" to her chagrin, her lip began to tremble. "What—what is a control, anyway?" she wailed.
"It ain't nothing that you got to bother with just at present," her grandmother said, "you come here." She sank into one of the numerous valanced rockers conveniently placed about the house, and held out her arms. "You come here—to Grandma," she said.
"You'll think I'm an awful baby," Elizabeth sobbed on the comfortable bosom, snuggling a little closer in the protecting embrace. "It isn't so much what I've done that I mind, but what I've got to do. It isn't very brave of me, but I dread taking care of that awful woman for a whole week. She—she isn't very grateful, or anything. She'd rather have a medium. But—but the children—they love me."
"Elizabeth," her grandmother said, "I ain't a-going to let you go there for any week."
"But it's my duty, Grandmother. You aren't going to stop me doing my duty, are you? You can't spare Judidy, and there isn't anybody else. There aren't any real servants or charity organization societies here. I don't see what there is to do but just what Doctor Hartly does, go around and be anything that the people need you for."
"You can't be all things to all men, Elizabeth," her grandmother said, sagely. "If you can be like that Holland boy I've heard tell of, that put his hand through a hole in the wall and kept the water from destroying a whole town, that's one thing, but the kind of a hole that the water'll roll through forever, the minute you take your arm out, is another. The Steppe family is going to be in need of any person's full strength as long as Mis' Steppe continues to breathe, and we can't wish anybody's breath to stop, in spite of Moses. The best you can do for any set o' people in that condition is just what you went and done to-day. Look out for 'em when they get way down, give 'em what extry strength and vittles you got at all times, but don't try to lift 'em up unless you can lift 'em all the way out. Mis' Steppe will always sag back from her own weight."
"Oh, dear," Elizabeth sighed. "Don't you think she could be reformed?"
"She might, and then again she mightn't. I should say she couldn't be. She's always trying to get something for nothing, that woman is. This business of getting a medium to get her control to fix up things she's too lazy to fix for herself that's Mis' Steppe all over."
"But what is a control?"
"A control is a spirit guide that takes possession of a medium when she goes into a trance. Somebody that has lived and died, usually somebody kind o' tricky, that has a hard time getting into communication with whoever 'tis they want to talk to."