AS matters were now running so swimmingly with us, Ethel invited an old school friend of hers to come and pay us a visit.

Miss Paxton, “Cherry,” as most of her friends call her, is an unusually talented woman. She can draw very well indeed, and she can play the piano in an almost professional way. Tall and slender, with a facial animation that is almost beauty, she is a general favorite by virtue of her buoyant spirits and readiness for whatever is going on.

When Minerva heard that she was coming up she clapped her hands and said,

“My-oh-my! I’m glad to hear she’s comin’. Now we will have music.”

She meant piano music, for Miss Paxton did not sing. But we had no piano.

I had not thought it worth while to get one, because Ethel, while very fond of music and with a cultivated taste for it, is not able to play. Her father thought that so many people now-a-days play the piano badly, that it was just as well not to play it at all, and he would never hear of her taking lessons.

As Miss Paxton was only going to be up a week, it did not seem to be worth while sending to Springfield for a piano. I did not know at the time that there was a wareroom in Egerton.

We talked it over, Ethel and I, and we came to the conclusion that we would help Cherry to enjoy herself without music—unless she should show an unexpected predilection for the accordeon, in which case we had no doubt that Minerva would lend her her instrument.

Cherry was coming on a Saturday, and we were to drive to Egerton to meet her.

Friday afternoon we went to call on Mrs. Hartlett, an old lady, who was in her hundredth year, and in almost complete possession of her faculties.

I feel that I owe it to Mrs. Hartlett to give some account of our visit to her, although the real object of this chapter is to tell what was happening during our absence from home.

Mrs. Hartlett was a widow, her husband having died eighty-one years before.

“Just think of it, Philip,” said Ethel, as we began to descend the little hill at the foot of which Mrs. Hartlett lived with a granddaughter, a woman verging on sixty years, and almost as old looking as her grandmother.

“Just think of it; for the best part of her life Mrs. Hartlett has had a young husband.”

“What do you mean?” said I, not at once seeing her drift.

“Why, the memory of her husband is that of a young man. They said he was only twenty-two when he died, and for over eighty years she has had that picture in her memory.”

“It’s probably kept her young,” said I.

We found her sitting outside of her door under a grape arbour, knitting. Her face was thin and her cheek bones high and the skin was drawn tightly, but its colour had a reminiscence of the rosy shade that had (so tradition said) made her a beauty “in the days when Madison was president.”

She was erect, and despite a slight trembling of her frame, she looked strong.

“We thought we’d come and see you and bring you some sweet peas,” said Ethel.

“It is very good of you,” said she, in a voice which though cracked had a pleasant ring of sincerity in it. “You are the Vernons, are you not?”

I was surprised that so old a soul should be enough interested in things to know who transient summer people were, but I suppose it was that very interest in things that had kept her faculties unimpaired.

As I looked at her I felt proud of New England. Perfectly self-possessed, abundantly able to hold her own in conversation, respected by all and self-respecting, she was a type of that native cultivation that made the hill towns a source of strength to the nation, before the coming of steam cars that drew the young men and maidens from the hills and sent them forth to carry New England traditions to the West.

“Yes, so you’ve heard of us.”

“Oh, yes, the young people come in and keep me informed of all passing matters,” said she, talking slowly and evidently choosing her words with care.

“Pray be seated,” said she quaintly, and we took seats under the pleasant grape arbour.

Suddenly a canary, whose cage hung in the centre of the arbour, burst into a roulade that had something of the bubbling ecstacy of a bobolink’s note.

Mrs. Hartlett looked up at him and smiled.

“He is a source of comfort to me,” said she. “He sings as long as the sun shines. Last winter he was mute for upwards of a week, and I feared that I was going to lose him, but it was only that he was moulting. When his new coat had come he began singing again and in spite of the fact that he has no mate he is happy.”

Two mateless creatures and both of them happy. It’s all in the temperament.

“How do you like it up on these hills?” said Mrs. Hartlett.

“Very much,” said Ethel. “It is so quiet and there are so few houses that it’s a pleasant contrast to our noisy, busy New York life.”

“Child, I remember when this was a busy community, too,” said the old lady. “When I was a young lady of eighteen, we had a singing school here and Dr. Lowell Mason used to come from Boston every two weeks to teach us, and there were two hundred young people of both sexes who gathered in the seminary to learn of him.”

“You had a seminary here?” said I, astonished, for the district school of the present day is the only school in the neighbourhood, and it does not accommodate more than twenty-five.

“Indeed we did; a seminary and a college for chirurgeons. Dr. Hadley was the best chirurgeon of his time and young men from all over New England used to come here to learn of him. Times have changed, but if the houses have fallen away and the people gone the country has grown more beautiful.”

“How do you pass the time?”

“With my magazines and my young friends. I have taken Littell’s Living Age and the Atlantic ever since they started, and they keep me abreast of the times, and the young people are very good. Two years ago they clubbed together and gave me a cabinet organ. I cannot play it myself; my fingers are too stiff, but the young folks come in and play me the old tunes I knew when I was a girl—‘Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes,’ and many others that are never heard now, I suspect. Mr. and Mrs. Hayden are especially kind in coming to sing to me but all the young people are very thoughtful.”

It was not until later that I realized that the “young people” she had specified were considerably over fifty. But she was right. Youth is a relative term.

“Do you walk about much?”

“When my rheumatism permits of walking. My knees are somewhat rheumatic but it is no more than I might reasonably expect at my great age. I shall be one hundred years old on the 16th of September next if the Lord spares me.”

There was a gleam of pride in her eyes as she said this. She was striving for a goal.

We rose to go soon after, fearing that we might tire her if we stayed too long.

“Oh, don’t go yet,” said she, half rising and putting out her mitted hand. “You have barely come. I want that you should see my cat. I am quite proud of my cat. She was given to me by a play actor who spent last summer here. I was brought up to consider play acting an abomination to the Lord but we live and learn and this gentleman was an honest, God-fearing man although he has been a play actor ever since his youth. I cannot reca............