In preserving-time she was allowed to have none of the pleasant responsibility of deciding when the fruit had cooked long enough, nor did she share in the little excitement of pouring the sweet-smelling stuff into the stone jars.  She sat in a corner with the children and stoned cherries incessantly, or hulled strawberries until her fingers were dyed red to the bone.

The Elwells were not consciously unkind to their aunt, they were even in a vague way fond of her; but she was so utterly insignificant a figure in their lives that they bestowed no thought whatever on her.  Aunt Mehetabel did not resent this treatment; she took it quite as unconsciously as they gave it.  It was to be expected when one was an old-maid dependent in a busy family.  She gathered what crumbs of comfort she could from their occasional careless kindnesses and tried to hide the hurt which even yet pierced her at her brother’s rough joking.  In the winter when they all sat before the big hearth, roasted apples, drank mulled cider, and teased the girls about their beaux and the boys about their sweethearts, she shrank into a dusky corner with her knitting, happy if the evening passed without her brother saying, with a crude sarcasm, “Ask your Aunt Mehetabel about the beaux that used to come a-sparkin’ her!” or, “Mehetabel, how was’t when you was in love with Abel Cummings.”  As a matter of fact, she had been the same at twenty as at sixty, a quiet, mouse-like little creature, too timid and shy for anyone to notice, or to raise her eyes for a moment and wish for a life of her own.

Her sister-in-law, a big hearty housewife, who ruled indoors with as autocratic a sway as did her husband on the farm, was rather kind in an absent, offhand way to the shrunken little old woman, and it was through her that Mehetabel was able to enjoy the one pleasure of her life.  Even as a girl she had been clever with her needle in the way of patching bedquilts.  More than that she could never learn to do.  The garments which she made for herself were the most lamentable affairs, and she was humbly grateful for any help in the bewildering business of putting them together.  But in patchwork she enjoyed a tepid importance.  She could really do that as well as anyone else.  During years of devotion to this one art she had accumulated a considerable store of quilting patterns.  Sometimes the neighbors would send over and ask “Miss Mehetabel” for such and such a design.  It was with an agreeable flutter at being able to help someone that she went to the dresser, in her bare little room under the eaves, and extracted from her crowded portfolio the pattern desired.