Mrs. Carr looked puzzled and a little vexed, as she answered, “Well, I reckon they’ve got to be talked about a good deal, fust and last, ’s long ’s there’s so many dies on ’em.  But I don’t know ’s you ‘n’ I’ve got any call to dwell on ’em much.  You’ve got dreadful quick feelin’s, Mercy, ain’t you?  You allus was orful feelin’ for everybody when you wuz little, ‘n’ I don’t see ’s you’ve outgrowed it a bit.  But I expect it’s thet makes you sech friends with folks, an’ makes you such a good gal to your poor old mother.  Kiss me, child,” and Mrs. Carr lifted up her face to be kissed, as a child lifts up its face to its mother.  She did this many times a day; and, whenever Mercy bent down to kiss her, she put her hands on the old woman’s shoulders, and said, “Dear little mother!” in a tone which made her mother’s heart warm with happiness.

It is a very beautiful thing to see just this sort of relation between an aged parent and a child, the exact reversal of the bond, and the bond so absolutely fulfilled.  It seems to give a new and deeper sense to the word “filial,” and a new and deeper significance to the joy of motherhood or fatherhood.  Alas, that so few sons and daughters are capable of it! so few helpless old people know the blessedness of it!  No little child six years old ever rested more entirely and confidingly in the love and kindness and shelter and direction of its mother than did Mrs. Carr in the love and kindness and shelter and direction of her daughter Mercy.  It had begun to be so, while Mercy was yet a little girl.  Before she was fifteen years old, she felt a responsibility for her mother’s happiness, a watchfulness over her mother’s health, and even a care of her mother’s clothes.  With each year, the sense of these responsibilities grew deeper; and after her marriage, as she was denied the blessing of children, all the deep maternal instincts of her strong nature flowed back and centred anew around this comparatively helpless, aged child whom she called mother, and treated with never-failing respect.

When Mrs. Carr first saw the house they were to live in, she exclaimed,—­

“O Lor’, Mercy!  Is thet the house?” Then, stepping back a few steps, shoving her spectacles high on her nose, and with her head well thrown back, she took a survey of the building in silence.  Then she turned slowly around, and, facing Mercy, said in a droll, dry way, not uncommon with her,—­

“’Bijah Jenkins’s barn!”

Mercy laughed outright.

“So it is, mother.  I hadn’t thought of it.  It looks just like that old barn of Deacon Jenkins’s.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Carr.  “That’s it, exzackly.  Well, I never thought o’ offerin’ to hire a barn to live in afore, but I s’pose ’t’ll do till we can look about.  Mebbe we can do better.”

“But we’ve taken it for a year, mother,” said Mercy, a little dismayed.