her finger-tips, sat by, an unheeded watcher, while old Martha trussed
the chickens for the market-stall as she had trussed them for nearly
fourscore years--all leg and no breast. And the hundred hints anent
effective cleaning and labour-lightening and the things that make for
wholesomeness which the young woman was ready to impart or to put into
action dropped away into nothingness before that wan, muttering,
unheeding presence. Above all, the coveted window corner, that was to be
a dainty, cheerful oasis in the gaunt old kitchen, stood now choked and
lumbered with a litter of odds and ends that Emma, for all her nominal
authority, would not have dared or cared to displace; over them seemed to
be spun the protection of something that was like a human cobweb.
Decidedly Martha was in the way. It would have been an unworthy meanness
to have wished to see the span of that brave old life shortened by a few
paltry months, but as the days sped by Emma was conscious that the wish
was there, disowned though it might be, lurking at the back of her mind.

She felt the meanness of the wish come over her with a qualm of
self-reproach one day when she came into the kitchen and found an
unaccustomed state of things in that usually busy quarter. Old Martha
was not working. A basket of corn was on the floor by her side, and out
in the yard the poultry were beginning to clamour a protest of overdue
feeding-time. But Martha sat huddled in a shrunken bunch on the window
seat, looking out with her dim old eyes as though she saw something
stranger than the autumn landscape.

"Is anything the matter, Martha?" asked the young woman.

"'Tis death, 'tis death a-coming," answered the quavering voice; "I knew
'twere coming. I knew it. 'Tweren't for nothing that old Shep's been
howling all morning. An' last night I heard the screech-owl give the