an' try to make him blow it afore he was a month old. But by the time he
was nine months old he'd blow it ez loud ez I could. And his father he'd
just lay back 'n his chair, and laugh 'n' laugh, 'n' call out, 'Blow away,
my hearty!' Oh, my! it don't seem any longer ago'n yesterday. I wish I'd
ha' known. I wa'n't never friends with Patience any more arter that. I
never misgave me but what she'd got the whistle. It was such a curious
cut thing, and cost a heap o' money. Your father wouldn't never tell what
he gin for 't. Oh, my! it don't seem any longer ago 'n yesterday," and the
old woman wiped her eyes on her apron, and struggling up on her feet took
the whistle again from Mercy's hands.

"How old would my brother Caley be now, if he had lived, mother?" said
Mercy, anxious to bring her mother gently back to the present.

"Well, let me see, child. Why, Caley--Caley, he'd be--How old am I, Mercy?
Dear me! hain't I lost my memory, sure enough, except about these ere old
things? They seem's clear's daylight."

"Sixty-five last July, mother," said Mercy. "Don't you know I gave you
your new specs then?"

"Oh, yes, child,--yes. Well, I'm sixty-five, be I? Then Caley,--Caley,
he'd be, let me see--you reckon it, Mercy. I wuz goin' on nineteen when
Caley was born."

"Why, mother," exclaimed Mercy, "is it really so long ago? Then my brother
Caleb would be forty-six years old now!" and mercy took again in her hand
the yellow ivory whistle, and ran her fingers over the faded and frayed
pink ribbon, and looked at it with an indefinable sense of its being a
strange link between her and a distant past, which, though she had never