Ann Smith 
I 
ARMER SMITH’S third daughter Ann 
—‘‘ Aunt Ann” or “ Auntie” to all the 
farmer’s grandchildren—had been dead 
some years before it came home to me 
how much she must have suffered from nostalgia 
in her long life. I ought to have known it. I 
ought to have understood, better than in fact I 
did, her eagerness to accept my sisters’ offer to 
come and live with us for the rest of her days. 
Instead of understanding it I thought her haste 
almost indecent. It was not made known to me 
that she had, in faét, been careful to assure herself 
that she would not be intruding. I was not 
allowed to see any trace of hesitation. Within a 
fortnight she had finally left her own little house— 
so pleasant to her, I had thought—and had 
arranged for selling the furniture she did indeed 
prize; and here she was, at her needlework—a 
fixture under my own roof. For years after- 
wards she continued here, one of the family 
(sometimes rather in the way, to tell the truth) ; 
and still I was too dense to realise that she had, 
in fact, found with us something better than the 
refuge all old people ought to have. 
But gradually it dawned on me that probably 
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