These words were spoken as if there were a third person listening; somebody besides Mrs. Crowe. The watchers could not rid their minds of the feeling that they were being watched themselves. The spring wind whistled in the window crack, now and then, and buffeted the little house in a gusty way that had a sort of companionable effect. Yet, on the whole, it was a very still night, and the watchers spoke in a half-whisper.

“She was the freest-handed woman that ever I knew,” said Mrs. Crowe, decidedly. “According to her means, she gave away more than anybody. I used to tell her’t wa’n’t right. I used really to be afraid that she went without too much, for we have a duty to ourselves.”

Sister Binson looked up in a half-amused, unconscious way, and then recollected herself.

Mrs. Crowe met her look with a serious face. “It ain’t so easy for me to give as it is for some,” she said simply, but with an effort which was made possible only by the occasion. “I should like to say, while Tempy is laying here yet in her own house, that she has been a constant lesson to me. Folks are too kind, and shame me with thanks for what I do. I ain’t such a generous woman as poor Tempy was, for all she had nothin’ to do with, as one may say.”

Sarah Binson was much moved at this confession, and was even pained and touched by the unexpected humility. “You have a good many calls on you”—she began, and then left her kind little compliment half finished.

“Yes, yes, but I’ve got means enough. My disposition’s more of a cross to me as I grow older, and I made up my mind this morning that Tempy’s example should be my pattern henceforth.” She began to knit faster than ever.

“’Tain’t no use to get morbid: that’s what Tempy used to say herself,” said Sarah Ann, after a minute’s silence. “Ain’t it strange to say ‘used to say?”’ and her own voice choked a little. “She never did like to hear folks git goin’ about themselves.”

“’T was only because they’re apt to do it so as other folks will say ’twasn’t so, an’ praise ’em up,” humbly replied Mrs. Crowe, “and that ain’t my object. There wa’n’t a child but what Tempy set herself to work to see what she could do to please it. One time my brother’s folks had been stopping here in the summer, from Massachusetts. The children was all little, and they broke up a sight of toys, and left ’em when they were going away. Tempy come right up after they rode by, to see if she couldn’t help me set the house to rights, and she caught me just as I was going to fling some of the clutter into the stove. I was kind of tired out, starting ’em off in season. ‘Oh, give me them!’ says she, real pleading; and she wropped ’em up and took ’em home with her when she went, and she mended ’em up and stuck ’em together, and made some young one or other happy with every blessed one. You’d thought I’d done her the biggest favor. ‘No thanks to me. I should ha’ burnt ’em, Tempy,’ says I.”

“Some of ’em came to our house, I know,” said Miss Binson. “She’d take a lot o’ trouble to please a child, ’stead o’ shoving of it out o’ the way, like the rest of us when we’re drove.

“I can tell you the biggest thing she ever done, and I don’t know’s there’s anybody left but me to tell it. I don’t want it forgot,” Sarah Binson went on, looking up at the clock to see how the night was going. “It was that pretty-looking Trevor girl, who taught the Corners school, and married so well afterwards, out in New York State. You remember her, I dare say?”

“Certain,” said Mrs. Crowe, with an air of interest.

“She was a splendid scholar, folks said, and give the school a great start; but she’d overdone herself getting her education, and working to pay for it, and she all broke down one spring, and Tempy made her come and stop with her a while—you remember that? Well, she had an uncle, her mother’s brother, out in Chicago, who was well off and friendly, and used to write to Lizzie Trevor, and I dare say make