“We are almost there,” her mother answered. “You can see the buildings now, if you will stop being a butterfly. Don't you like them?”
“Yes, I 'specially like them all so white. Is it a town, Mardie?”
“It is a village, but not quite like other villages. I have told you often about the Shaker Settlement, where your grandmother brought me once when I was just your age. There was a thunder-storm; they kept us all night, and were so kind that I never forgot them. Then your grandmother and I stopped off once when we were going to Boston. I was ten then, and I remember more about it. The same sweet Eldress was there both times.”
“What is an El-der-ess, Mardie?”
“A kind of everybody's mother, she seemed to be,” Susanna responded, with a catch in her breath.
“I'd 'specially like her; will she be there now, Mardie?”
“I'm hoping so, but it is eighteen years ago. I was ten and she was about forty, I should think.”
“Then o' course she'll be dead,” said Sue, cheerfully, “or either she'll have no teeth or hair.”
“People don't always die before they are sixty, Sue.”
“Do they die when they want to, or when they must?”