The Brimming Cup

She was a little scared. She wished she could get right up and go home

to Mother. But the procession wouldn't stop . . . wouldn't stop. . . .

Aunt Hetty hung up the last bag. "There," she said, "that's all we can

do here today. Elly, you'd better run along home. The sun'll be down

behind the mountain now before you get there."

Elly snatched at the voice, at the words, at Aunt Hetty's wrinkled,

shaking old hand. She jumped up from the trunk. Something in her face

made Aunt Hetty say, "Well, you look as though you'd most dropped to

sleep there in the sun. It does make a person feel lazy this first warm

March sun. I declare this morning I didn't want to go to work

house-cleaning. I wanted to go and spend the day with the hens, singing

over that little dozy ca-a-a-a they do, in the sun, and stretch one leg

and one wing till they most broke off, and ruffle up all my feathers

and let 'em settle back very slow, and then just set."

They had started downstairs before Aunt Hetty had finished this, the

little girl holding tightly to the wrinkled old hand. How peaceful Aunt

Hetty was! Even the smell of her black woolen dresses always had a

quiet smell. And she must see all those hunks of mud on the white

stairs, but she never said a word. Elly squeezed her hand a little

tighter.

What was it she had been thinking about on the hair-trunk that made her

so glad to feel Aunt Hetty peaceful? Oh yes, that Mother had been there,

where she was, when she was a little girl. Well, gracious! What of that?

She'd always known that Mother had visited Aunt Hetty a lot and that

Aunt Hetty had been awfully good to her, and that Mother loved Aunt

Hetty like everything. What had made it seem so queer, all of a sudden?

"Well," said Aunt Hetty at the front door, "step along now. I don't want

you should be late for supper." She tipped her head to look around the

edge of the top of the door and said, "Well, I declare, just see that

moon showing itself before ever the sun gets down."

She walked down the path a little way with Elly, who still held her

hand. They stood together looking up at the mountain, very high and blue

against the sky that was green . . . yes, it really was a pale, clear

green, at the top of the mountain-line. People always said the sky was

blue, except at sunset-time, like now, when it was filling the Notch

right to the top with every color that could be.