would certainly have the property. She wondered if she and Lois would
go to Elliot to live, and who would live in her tenement. The change
was hard for her to contemplate, and she wept a little. Many a
happiness comes to its object with outriders of sorrows to others.

Poor Amanda bemoaned herself over the changes that might come to her
little home, and planned nervously her manner of living with Lois
during the next week. Amanda had lived entirely alone for over twenty
years; this admitting another to her own territory seemed as grave a
matter to her as the admission of foreigners did to Japan. Indeed,
all her kind were in a certain way foreigners to Amanda; and she was
shy of them, she had so withdrawn herself by her solitary life, for
solitariness is the farthest country of them all.

Amanda did not sleep much, and it was very early in the morning--she
was standing before the kitchen looking-glass, twisting the rosettes
of her front hair--when Mrs. Field came in to say good-by. Mrs. Field
was gaunt and erect in her straight black clothes. She had her black
veil tied over her bonnet to protect it from dust, and the black
frame around her strong-featured face gave her a rigid, relentless
look, like a female Jesuit. Lois came faltering behind her mother.
She had a bewildered air, and she looked from her mother to Amanda
with appealing significance, but she did not speak.

"Well, I've come to say good-by," said Mrs. Field.

Amanda had one side of her front hair between her lips while she
twisted the other; she took it out. "Good-by, Mis' Field," she said.
"I'll do the best I can for Lois. How soon do you s'pose you'll be
back?"