It was part of Millie's religion to have kindly feelings toward all mankind. Finding breakfast on the table in the morning, she praised Ellen and thanked her and assured her that she would be lazy no more.
"We can plan everything so that neither will have more to do than the other."
"Thank you," said she in a tone which seemed to Millie to express a becoming gratitude.
Millie was sincerely commiserative; she pitied every one in the world who was not Millie Levis--except Matthew to whom she belonged.
"I never had a chance to tell you how sorry I am for you, Ellen," said she, looking pleasantly into Ellen's heavy eyes. "But we must remember that God doeth all things well."
In the autumn evenings Grandfather sat beside his stove in meditation. It was against his principles to permit himself too high a degree of physical comfort, but as the current of his blood ran less swiftly he drew unconsciously closer to the stove. As he had often sat here and ordered his life, so he was ordering now his departure from life. He dreamed sometimes of a burial such as the fathers had had, at midnight under the light of torches, with antiphonal singing and solemn tolling of bells, and with a procession of the Brotherhood of Zion and the Sisterhood of Spiritual Virgins.
Amos was at the pine table, now correcting the papers of the children in his school, now bent over his Latin manuscript. It seemed to him that his mind became less active and that the devil tempted him to dream when he ought to be at work.
To Grandfather there had been in the universe two stable realities, the existence of a wise and all-powerful Creator and the correctness of the Seventh-Day Baptist interpretation of the Creator's mind and works. Now in his old age he dwelt with increasing satisfaction upon a third reality, the divine appointment and fitness of Amos, on account of his faith and piety, to interpret both Creator and theology. He thought, as the weeks passed, less anxiously about Ellen, ascribing her placability to his own advice and to her better mind, rather than to the stern necessities of her case. She would, he believed, now that the dangerous influence of her father was removed, "come round."
One day he summoned a carpenter and went with him over the old buildings, measuring and inspecting. Here a wall needed strengthening, here a chimney rebuilding, here fresh plaster should replace the broken mortar of clay and grass. The sum required to put all in order was not large.