and she would give her some blackberry preserve for him; she had some that was nice and it was very healing.  So along about half-past one o’clock, just as we had got the kitchen cleared, and mother and I had got out the big wheels to spin a few rolls,—­we always liked to spin together, and mother was always good company;—­my brother Jonas—­that was the youngest of us—­looked out of the window, and says he:  ’Here comes Joe Ashby’s wife with a six-quart pail.’

“Mother she began to shake all over with a laugh she tried to swallow down, but I didn’t know what it was all about, and in come poor Susan Ellen and lit on the edge of the first chair and set the pail down beside of her.  We tried to make her feel welcome, and spoke about everything we could contrive, seein’ as it was the first time she’d been over; and she seemed grateful and did the best she could, and lost her strangeness with mother right away, for mother was the best hand to make folks feel to home with her that I ever come across.  There ain’t many like her now, nor never was, I tell ’em.  But there wa’n’t nothing said about the six-quart pail, and there it set on the floor, until Susan Ellen said she must be going and mentioned that there was something said about a remedy for Joseph’s throat.  ‘Oh, yes,’ says mother, and she brought out the little stone jar she kept the preserve in, and there wa’n’t more than the half of it full.  Susan Ellen took up the cover off the pail, and I walked off into the bedroom, for I thought I should laugh, certain.  Mother put in a big spoonful, and another, and I heard ’em drop, and she went on with one or two more, and then she give up.  ‘I’d give you the jar and welcome,’ she says, ’but I ain’t very well off for preserves, and I was kind of counting on this for tea in case my brother’s folks are over.’  Susan Ellen thanked her, and said Joseph would be obliged, and back she went acrost the pasture.  I can see that big tin pail now a-shining in the sun.

“The old man was alive then, and he took a great spite against poor Susan Ellen, though he never would if he hadn’t been set on by John; and whether he was mad because Joseph had stepped in to so much good money or what, I don’t know,—­but he twitted him about her, and at last he and the old man between ’em was too much to bear, and Joe fitted up a couple o’ rooms for himself in a building he’d put up for a kind of work-shop.  He used to carpenter by spells, and he clapboarded it and made it as comfortable as he could, and he ordered John out of it for good and all; but he and Susan Ellen both treated the old sir the best they knew how, and Joseph kept right on with his farm work same as ever, and meant to lay up a little more money to join with his wife’s, and push off as soon as he could for the sake of peace, though if there was anybody set by the farm it was Joseph.  He was to blame for some things,—­I never saw an Ashby that wasn’t,—­and I dare say he was aggravating.  They were clearing a