"I've kind of hankered to go to see John all these years. Forty years is
quite a spell to hanker, isn't it? But I never felt like leaving the
house behind, and I couldn't take it along very conveniently, so I
stayed to home. And then--my dear, you can laugh as well as not, but
I didn't like to leave Amelia."

"But you might have taken her with--"

"No," seriously, "I couldn't 've taken Amelia. I think, deary, it might
've killed her; she's part of the little house and the morning-glories
and roses. I'd have had to leave Amelia if I'd gone, and it didn't seem
right."

"But now--"

"Now," the little, old woman laughed in her odd, tender way that "went
with" Amelia, "now she'll have plenty of young company--all o' you here
with her. I shall make believe she's coming and going with you, and
it'll be a sight of comfort. Yes, deary, I guess this is going to be my
chance to visit John."

"And our chance to have a summer in the country," completed the Talented
One. "Oh, I think you are--_dear_! Whatever will the other girls
say when I tell them about you!"

One day T.O. remembered the blue pump. She gazed out of the window at
the brown one in the little yard. "Who would have thought," she sighed,
"that I could be so happy without a blue pump!"

"What's that, deary?" The little, old woman was sewing patchwork near by.