happen to have a picture of her along with you?"

Paul stared at him.

"No, of course you wouldn't! And I'd be 'most afeard to look at it, if you
had. She must have changed considerable. Time hasn't stood still with her
any more than the rest of us."

"I have no picture of my mother," Paul replied.

The packer saw that his question had jarred; he had waited weeks to ask
it. He passed it off now with one of his homely similes. "If you was to
break a cup clean in two, and put the halves together again while the
break was fresh, they'd knit so you wouldn't hardly see a crack. But you
take one half and set it in the chainy closet and chuck the other half out
on the ash-heap,--them halves won't look much like pieces of the same cup,
come a year or two. The edges won't jine no more than the lips of an old
cut that's healed without stitches. No; married folks they grow together
or they grow apart, and they're a-doing of the one or the other every
minute of the time, breaks or no breaks. Does she go up to the old place
summers?"

"Not lately, except on business," said Paul. "A company was formed to open
slate quarries on the upper farm, a good many years ago. They are worth
more than all the land forty times over."

"I always said so; always told the old man he had a gold mine in that
ridge. Was this before he died?"

"Long after. It was my mother's scheme mainly. She controls it now. She is