A Spinner in the Sun

"I knew," said Miss Evelina, her cool, quiet hand still upon Araminta's face. "Doctor Ralph told me before he went home."

"Oh," cried Araminta, "does he hate me?"

"Hate you?" repeated Miss Evelina. "Dear child, no. He loves you. Would you believe me, Araminta, if I told you that it was not wrong to be married--that there was no reason in the world why you should not marry the man who loves you?"

"Not wrong!" exclaimed Araminta, incredulously. "Aunt Hitty says it is. My mother was married!"

"Yes," said Miss Evelina, "and so was mine. Aunt Hitty's mother was married, too."

"Are you sure?" demanded Araminta. "She never told me so. If her mother was married, why didn't she tell me?"

"I don't know, dear," returned Miss Evelina, truthfully. "Mehitable's ways are strange." Had she been asked to choose, at the moment, between Araminta's dense ignorance and all of her own knowledge, embracing, as it did, a world of pain, she would have chosen gladly, the fuller life.

The door-bell below rang loudly, defiantly. It was the kind of a ring which might impel the dead to answer it. Miss Evelina fairly ran downstairs.

Outside stood Miss Mehitable. Unwillingly, in her wake, had come the Reverend Austin Thorpe. Under Miss Mehitable's capable and constant direction, he had made a stretcher out of the clothes poles and a sheet. He was jaded in spirit beyond all words to express, but he had come, as Roman captives came, chained to the chariot wheels of the conqueror.

"Me and the minister," announced Miss Mehitable, imperiously, "have come to take Minty home!"