"Thank you, I believe I don't want any dessert," he said. "The fact is,
the dinner was so good that I haven't left any room for pie. Are those
your children?"

"Yes," said the woman, looking up at the picture with the pie in her
hand. "They're the last two I lost."

"Oh, excuse me--" the guest began.

"It's the way they appear in the spirit life. It's a spirit picture."

"Oh, I thought there was something strange about it."

"Well, it's a good deal like the photograph we had taken about a year
before they died. It's a good likeness. They say they don't change a
great deal at first."

She seemed to refer the point to him for his judgment, but he answered
wide of it:

"I came up here to paint your mountain, if you don't mind, Mrs.
Durgin-Lion's Head, I mean."

"Oh yes. Well, I don't know as we could stop you if you wanted to take it
away." A spare glimmer lighted up her face.

The painter rejoined in kind: "The town might have something to say, I
suppose."

"Not if you was to leave a good piece of intervale in place of it. We've