He's as sweet and kind as--"

"Who? Eben Hammond? Land sakes, child, don't I know it? Cap'n Eben's the
salt of the earth. I'm a Regular and always have been, but I'd be glad
if my own society was seasoned with a few like him. 'Twould taste better
to me of a Sunday." She paused, and then added quizzically: "What d'you
s'pose Cap'n Elkanah and the rest of our parish committee would say if
they heard THAT?"

"Goodness knows! Still, I'm glad to hear you say it. And uncle says you
are as good a woman as ever lived. He thinks you're misled, of course,
but that some day you'll see the error of your ways."

"Humph! I'll have to hurry up if I want to see 'em without spectacles.
See my errors! Land sakes! much as I can do to see the heads of these
tacks. Takin' up carpets is as hard a test of a body's eyesight as 'tis
of their religion."

Her companion put down the tablecloth she was folding and looked
earnestly at the other woman. To an undiscerning eye the latter would
have looked much as she always did--plump and matronly, with brown hair
drawn back from the forehead and parted in the middle; keen brown eyes
with a humorous twinkle in them--this was the Keziah Coffin the later
generation of Trumet knew so well.

But Grace Van Horne, who called her aunt and came to see her so
frequently, while her brother was alive and during the month following
his death, could see the changes which the month had wrought. She saw
the little wrinkles about the eyes and the lines of care about the
mouth, the tired look of the whole plucky, workaday New England figure.