Now she watched him with her
blue dilated eyes. But soon he turned away from the coffin and made
his way straight out of the room, without a word. Evelina followed
him through the entry and opened the outer door. He turned on the
threshold and looked back at her, his face working.
"Don't ye go to lottin' too much on what ye're goin' to get through
folks that have died an' not had anything," he said; and he shook his
head almost fiercely at her.
"No, I won't. I don't think I understand what you mean, sir,"
stammered Evelina.
The old man stood looking at her a moment. Suddenly she saw the tears
rolling over his old cheeks. "I'm much obliged to ye for lettin' of
me see her," he said, hoarsely, and crept feebly down the steps.
Evelina went back trembling to the room where her dead cousin lay,
and covered her face, and closed the shutter again. Then she went
about her household duties, wondering. She could not understand what
it all meant; but one thing she understood--that in some way this old
dead woman, Evelina Adams, had gotten immortal youth and beauty in
one human heart. "She looked to him just as she did when she was a
girl," Evelina kept thinking to herself with awe. She said nothing
about it to Mrs. Martha Loomis or her daughters. They had been in the
back part of the house, and had not heard old Thomas Merriam come in,
and they never knew about it.
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