The guest seemed helpless to take his gaze from it, and he sat fallen back in his chair at it when the woman came in with a pie.
“Thank you, I believe I don't want any dessert,” he said. “The fact is, the dinner was so good that I haven't left any room for pie. Are those your children?”
“Yes,” said the woman, looking up at the picture with the pie in her hand. “They're the last two I lost.”
“Oh, excuse me—” the guest began.
“It's the way they appear in the spirit life. It's a spirit picture.”
“Oh, I thought there was something strange about it.”
“Well, it's a good deal like the photograph we had taken about a year before they died. It's a good likeness. They say they don't change a great deal at first.”
She seemed to refer the point to him for his judgment, but he answered wide of it:
“I came up here to paint your mountain, if you don't mind, Mrs. Durgin-Lion's Head, I mean.”
“Oh yes. Well, I don't know as we could stop you if you wanted to take it away.” A spare glimmer lighted up her face.