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"There's such a thing as being unfair, Kate," said her mother. "I always say, poor Sister Anne."

"Poor Sister Anne, then."

"And I think Dicey just thinks she remembers it because she's heard it."

"Well, at least she had something to be poor about!" I said irrepressibly. "Falling in the well, and being an old maid, that's two things!"

Kate cried, "Don't rock so headlong!"

"Maybe she even knew what she was about. Eva's Archie Fielder got drunk every whipstitch for the rest of his life," said Aunt Ethel.

"Only tell me this, somebody, and I'll be quiet," I said. "What poor somebody's Sister Anne was she to begin with?"

Then I held the rocker and leaned against my cousin. I was terrified that I had brought up Uncle Harlan. Kate had warned me again how, ever since his death seventeen years ago, Aunt Ethel could not bear to hear the name of her husband spoken, or to speak it herself.

"Poor Beck's, of course," said Aunt Ethel. "She's a little bit kin on both sides. Since you ask, Beck's half-sister—that's why we were always so careful to call her Sister."

"Oh. I thought that was just for teasing," said Kate.

"Well, of course the teasing element is not to be denied," said Aunt Ethel.

"Who began—" My hat was set, not at all rightly, on my own head by Kate—like a dunce cap.

The town was so quiet the doves from the river woods could be heard plainly. In town, the birds were quiet at this hour. Kate and I went on bobbing slowly up and down together as we rocked very gently by Aunt Ethel's bed. I saw us in the pier glass across the room. Looking at myself as the visitor, I considered myself as having a great deal still waiting to confide. My lips opened.

"He was ever so courtly," said my aunt. "Nobody in the family more so."

Kate with a tiny sting pulled a little hair from my neck, where it has always grown too low. I slapped at her wrist.

"But this last spell when I couldn't get out, and he's begun failing, what I remember about him is what I used to be told as a child, isn't that strange? When I knew him all my life and loved him. For instance, that he was a great one for serenading as a young man."

"Serenading!" said Kate and I together, adoring her and her memory. "I didn't know he could sing," said Kate.

"He couldn't. But he was a remarkable speller," said my aunt. "A born speller. I remember how straight he stood when they called the word. You know the church out there, like everything else in the world, raised its money by spelling matches. He knew every word in the deck. One time—one time, though!—I turned Uncle Felix down. I was not so bad myself, child though I was. And it isn't..."

"Ma'am?"

"It just isn't fair to have water dropped on your tongue, is it!"

"She ought not to have told you, the old buzzard!"

"The word," said Aunt Ethel, "the word was knick-knack. K-n-i-c-k, knick, hyphen, k-n-a-c-k, knack, knick-knack."

"She only writes because she has nothing else to do, away out yonder in the country!"

"She used to get dizzy very easily," Aunt Ethel spoke out in a firm voice, as if she were just waking up from a nap. "Maybe she did well—maybe a girl might do well sometimes not to marry, if she's not cut out for it."

"Aunt Ethel!" I exclaimed. Kate, sliding gently off the arm of my chair, was silent. But as if I had said something more, she turned around, her bare foot singing on the matting, her arm turned above her head, in a saluting, mocking way.

"Find me her letter again, Kate, where is it?" said Aunt Ethel, feeling under her solitaire board and her pillow. She held that little gilt-edged card, shook it, weighed it, and said, "All that really troubles me is that I can't bear for her to be on Uncle Felix's hands for so long! He was always so courtly, and his family's all, all in the churchyard now (but us!)—or New York!"

"Mama, let me bring you a drink of water."

"Dicey, I'm going to make you go to Mingo."

"But I want to go!"

She looked at me uncomprehending. Kate gave her a glass of water, with ice tinkling in it. "That reminds me, whatever you do, Kate, if you do