At length he said mildly, "Now, my good friends, it might be made the subject of ungenerous remarks, if you were to be seen talking with me long. You had better return to the house."
As Amy and I, with little Ben, rose to depart, he looked after us, and sighing, exclaimed, "poor creatures, my heart bleeds for you!"
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PRATTLINGS OF INSANITY—OLD WOUNDS REOPEN—THE WALK TO THE DOCTOR'S—INFLUENCE OF NATURE.
Upon my return to the house I hastened on to the cabin, hoping to find Aunt Polly almost entirely recovered. Passing hastily through the yard I entered the cabin with a light step, and to my surprise found her sitting up in a chair, playing with some old faded artificial flowers, the dilapidated decorations of Miss Tildy's summer bonnet, which had been swept from the house with the litter on the day before. I had never seen her engaged in a pastime so childish and sportive, and was not a little astonished, for her aversion to flowers had often been to me the subject of remark.
"What have you there that is pretty, Aunt Polly?" I asked with tenderness.
With a wondering, childish smile, she held the crushed blossoms up, and turning them over and over in her hands, said:
"Putty things! ye is berry putty!" then pressing them to her bosom, she stroked the leaves as kindly as though she had been smoothing the truant locks of a well-beloved child. I could not understand this freak, for she was one to whose uncultured soul all sweet and pretty fancies seemed alien. Looking up to me with that vacant glance which at once explained all, she said: