The Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Megapack. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

roost up in trees to sing, but stand on the ground, with lilies growin’ round their feet, maybe, up to their knees, or on the gold stones in the street, an’ play on their harps to go with the singin’.”

      The other sister gave a scared, awed look at her. “Lor, don’t talk that way, sister,” said she. “What has got into you lately? You make me crawl all over, talkin’ so much about dyin’. You feel well, don’t you?”

      “Lor, yes,” replied the other, laughing, and picking up a clothespin for her pillow-case; “I feel well enough, an’ I don’t know what has got me to talkin’ so much about dyin’ lately, or thinkin’ about it. I guess it’s the spring weather. P’r’aps flowers growin’ make anybody think of wings sproutin’ kinder naterally. I won’t talk so much about it if it bothers you, an’ I don’t know but it’s sorter nateral it should. Did you get the potatoes before we came out, sister?”—with an awkward and kindly effort to change the subject.

      “No,” replied the other, stooping over the clothes-basket. There was such a film of tears in her dull blue eyes that she could not distinguish one article from another.

      Well, I guess you had better go in an’ get ’em, then they ain’t worth anything, this time of year, unless they soak a while, an I’ll finish hangin’ out the clothes while you do it.”

      “Well, p’r’aps I’d better,” the other woman replied, straightening herself up from the clothes-basket. Then she went into the house without another word; but down in the damp cellar, a minute later, she sobbed over the potato barrel as if her heart would break. Her sister’s remarks had filled her with a vague apprehension and grief which she could not throw off. And there was something little singular about it. Both these women had always been of a deeply religious cast of mind. They had studied the Bible faithfully, if not understandingly, and their religion had strongly tinctured their daily life. They knew almost as much about the Old Testament prophets as they did about their neighbors; and that was saying a good deal of two single women in a New England country town. Still this religious element in their natures could hardly have been termed spirituality. It deviated from that as much as anything of religion—which is in one way spirituality itself—could.

      Both sisters were eminently practical in all affairs of life, down to their very dreams, and Priscilla especially so. She had dealt in religion with the bare facts of sin and repentance, future punishment and reward. She fad dwelt very little, probably, upon the poetic splendors of the Eternal City, and talked about them still less. Indeed, she had always been reticent about her religious convictions, and had said very little about them even to her sister.

      The two women, with God in their thoughts every moment, seldom had spoken his name to each other. For Priscilla to talk in the strain that she had today, and for a week or two previous, off and on, was, from its extreme deviation from her usual custom, certainly startling.

      Poor Mary, sobbing over the potato barrel, thought it was a sign of approaching death. She had a few superstitious-like grafts upon her practical, commonplace character.

      She wiped her eyes finally, and went upstairs with her tin basin of potatoes, which were carefully washed and put to soak by the time her sister came in with the empty basket.

      At twelve exactly the two sat down to dinner in the clean kitchen, which was one of the two rooms the cottage boasted. The narrow entry ran from the front door to the back. On one side was the kitchen and living-room; on the other, the room where the sisters slept. There were two small unfinished lofts overhead, reached by a step-ladder through a little scuttle in the entry ceiling: and that was all. The sisters had earned the cottage and paid for it years before, by working as tailoresses. They had, besides, quite a snug little sum in the bank, which they had saved out of their hard earnings. There was no need for Priscilla and Mary to work so hard, people said; but work hard they did, and work hard they would as long as they lived. The mere habit of work had become as necessary to them as breathing.

      Just as soon as they had finished their meal and cleared away the dishes, they put on some clean starched purple prints, which were their afternoon dresses, and seated themselves with their work at the two front windows; the house faced southwest, so the sunlight streamed through both. It was a very warm day for the season, and the windows were open. Close to them in the yard outside stood great clumps of lilac bushes. They grew on the other side of the front door too; a little later the low cottage would look half-buried in them. The shadows of their leaves made a dancing net-work over the freshly washed yellow floor.

      The two sisters sat there and sewed on some coarse vests all the afternoon. Neither made a remark often. The room, with its glossy little cooking-stove, its eight-day clock on the mantel, its chintz-cushioned rocking-chairs, and the dancing shadows of the lilac leaves on its yellow floor, looked pleasant and peaceful.

      Just before six o’clock a neighbor dropped in with her cream pitcher to borrow some milk for tea, and she sat down for a minute’s chat after she had got it filled. They had been talking a few moments on neighborhood topics, when all of a sudden Priscilla let her work fall and raised her hand. “Hush!” whispered she.

      The other two stopped talking, and listened, staring at her wonderingly, but they could hear nothing.

      “What is it, Miss Priscilla?” asked the neighbor, with round blue eyes. She was a pretty young thing, who had not been married long.

      “Hush! Don’t speak. Don’t you hear that beautiful music?” Her ear was inclined towards the open window, her hand still raised warningly, and her eyes fixed on the opposite wall beyond them.

      Mary turned visibly paler than her usual dull paleness, and shuddered. “I don’t hear any music,” she said. “Do you, Miss Moore?”

      “No-o,” replied the caller, her simple little face beginning to put on a scared look, from a vague sense of a mystery she could not fathom.

      Mary Brown rose and went to the door, and looked eagerly up and down the street. “There ain’t no organ-man in sight anywhere,” said she, returning, “an’ I can’t hear any music, an’ Miss Moore can’t, an’ we’re both sharp enough o’ hearin’. You’re jest imaginin’ it, sister.”

      “I never imagined anything in my life,” returned the other, “an’ it ain’t likely I’m goin’ to begin now. It’s the beautifulest music. It comes from over the orchard there. Can’t you hear it? But it seems to me it’s growin’ a little fainter like now. I guess it’s movin’ off, perhaps.”

      Mary Brown set her lips hard. The grief and anxiety she had felt lately turned suddenly to unreasoning anger against the cause of it; through her very love she fired with quick wrath at the beloved object. Still she did not say much, only, “I guess it must be movin’ off,” with a laugh, which had an unpleasant ring in it.

      After the neighbor had gone, however, she said more, standing before her sister with her arms folded squarely across her bosom. “Now, Priscilla Brown,” she exclaimed, “I think it’s about time to put a stop to this. I’ve heard about enough of it. What do you s’pose Miss Moore thought of you? Next thing it’ll be all over town that you’re gettin’ spiritual notions. today it’s music that nobody else can hear, an’ yesterday you smelled roses, and there ain’t one in blossom this time o’ year, and all the time you’re talkin’ about dyin’. For my part, I don’t see why you ain’t as likely to live as I am. You’re uncommon hearty on vittles. You ate a pretty good dinner today for a dyin’ person.”

      “I didn’t say I was goin’ to die,” replied Priscilla, meekly: the two sisters seemed suddenly to have changed natures. “An’ I’ll try not to talk so, if it plagues you. I told you I wouldn’t this mornin’, but the music kinder took me by surprise like, an’ I thought maybe you an’ Miss Moore could hear it. I can jest hear it a little bit now, like the dyin’ away of a bell.”

      “There you go agin!” cried the other, sharply. “Do, for mercy’s sake, stop, Priscilla. There ain’t no music.”

      “Well, I won’t talk any more about it,” she answered, patiently; and she