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Page 30
"That last two weeks Luella she had a dreadful hard time, I guess.
She was pretty sick, and as near as I could make out nobody dared
go near her. I don't know as she was really needin' anythin' very
much, for there was enough to eat in her house and it was warm
weather, and she made out to cook a little flour gruel every day, I
know, but I guess she had a hard time, she that had been so petted
and done for all her life.
"When I got so I could go out, I went over there one morning. Mrs.
Babbit had just come in to say she hadn't seen any smoke and she
didn't know but it was somebody's duty to go in, but she couldn't
help thinkin' of her children, and I got right up, though I hadn't
been out of the house for two weeks, and I went in there, and
Luella she was layin' on the bed, and she was dyin'.
"She lasted all that day and into the night. But I sat there after
the new doctor had gone away. Nobody else dared to go there. It
was about midnight that I left her for a minute to run home and get
some medicine I had been takin', for I begun to feel rather bad.
"It was a full moon that night, and just as I started out of my
door to cross the street back to Luella's, I stopped short, for I
saw something."
Lydia Anderson at this juncture always said with a certain defiance
that she did not expect to be believed, and then proceeded in a
hushed voice:
"I saw what I saw, and I know I saw it, and I will swear on my
death bed that I saw it. I saw Luella Miller and Erastus Miller,
and Lily, and Aunt Abby, and Maria, and the Doctor, and Sarah, all
goin' out of her door, and all but Luella shone white in the
moonlight, and they were all helpin' her along till she seemed to
fairly fly in the midst of them. Then it all disappeared. I stood
a minute with my heart poundin', then I went over there. I thought
of goin' for Mrs. Babbit, but I thought she'd be afraid. So I went
alone, though I knew what had happened. Luella was layin' real
peaceful, dead on her bed."
This was the story that the old woman, Lydia Anderson, told, but
the sequel was told by the people who survived her, and this is the
tale which has become folklore in the village.
Lydia Anderson died when she was eighty-seven. She had continued
wonderfully hale and hearty for one of her years until about two
weeks before her death.
One bright moonlight evening she was sitting beside a window in her
parlour when she made a sudden exclamation, and was out of the
house and across the street before the neighbour who was taking
care of her could stop her. She followed as fast as possible and
found Lydia Anderson stretched on the ground before the door of
Luella Miller's deserted house, and she was quite dead.
The next night there was a red gleam of fire athwart the moonlight
and the old house of Luella Miller was burned to the ground.
Nothing is now left of it except a few old cellar stones and a
lilac bush, and in summer a helpless trail of morning glories among
the weeds, which might be considered emblematic of Luella herself.
THE SOUTHWEST CHAMBER
"That school-teacher from Acton is coming to-day," said the elder
Miss Gill, Sophia.
"So she is," assented the younger Miss Gill, Amanda.
"I have decided to put her in the southwest chamber," said Sophia.
Amanda looked at her sister with an expression of mingled doubt and
terror. "You don't suppose she would--" she began hesitatingly.
"Would what?" demanded Sophia, sharply. She was more incisive than
her sister. Both were below the medium height, and stout, but
Sophia was firm where Amanda was flabby. Amanda wore a baggy old
muslin (it was a hot day), and Sophia was uncompromisingly hooked
up in a starched and boned cambric over her high shelving figure.
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