"But next time poor old Sam come along, slicked up for courtin', with his heart in his vest pocket all ready to hand out, why, he got the door in his face, too, and had to start in all over again. Well, sir—I beg your pardon, ma'am, or I should rather say miss—that was pretty much the way things was when I quit home, and that was pretty much the way I expected to find 'em when I come back. It didn't seem as if a trifle of fifteen years was going to make much difference in Ma Sill, nor yet in Sam and Sim; they seemed sort of permanent, don't you know, like the old well-sweep, or the big willows. I s'pose when Ma was laid away the boys commenced to feel as if they was two minds as well as two bodies. You don't know what started them actin' this way?"
Miss Sands reflected a moment.
"I shouldn't be surprised," she said, "if it was their vests."
"Their vests?" repeated Calvin.
"Yes! You noticed Cousin Sam had on a red one and Cousin Sim a black one? Well—but suppose I tell you my end of it, Mr. Parks, just as it come to me."
"I should be fairly pleased to death if you would!" said Calvin Parks. "That's what I've been layin' for right along. Yes, I spotted them vests first thing, I guess it's the first stitch ever they had on that was anyways different. Well! you was going to say?"
Mary Sands was silent a moment, gazing thoughtfully at the blue platter she held.
"I'm a lone woman!" she said at last. "I was an only child, and parents died when I was but young. I've kept house these ten years for my uncle over to Tupham Corners. He was a widower with one son, and a real good man; like a father to me, he was. Last year he died, and left the farm to Reuben,—that was his son,—and the schooner, a coasting schooner he was owner of, to me. I expect he thought—" she paused, and a bright color crept into her warm brown cheek; "well," she continued, "anyhow, Reuben and I didn't hit it off real well, and I left. I was staying with friends when a letter come from Cousins statin' their Ma had passed away and would I come to keep house for them. I'd never visited here, but Cousin Lucindy was own cousin to my mother, and we'd met at conference and like that, but yet I'd never seen the boys. Well, I thought about it a spell, and I thought I'd come and try, and if we suited, well and good, and if not there'd be no bones broke. So I packed up and come over by the stage. Well!"
She stopped to laugh, a little mellow tinkling laugh. "I guess I sha'n't forget my first sight of Cousins. I come up the steps kind of quiet. The door stood open, and I knocked and waited a minute, hearin' voices; then I stepped inside the hall. The front sittin'-room door was open too, and Cousins was standin' back to it, them same brown backs, each one the other over again, and one of them was holdin' a red vest in each hand. I coughed, but they didn't hear me, and he went right on speakin'.
"'Ma bought this red flannel at the bankrupt sale,' he said. 'She allowed 'twould keep us in vests and her in petticuts and thro't bandages for ten years, and I'm not going to begin to waste the minute she's under ground. She would say, "you go on wearin' them vests!" and I'm goin' to.'