Amen." Then she rose, with no delay for lack of faith, and went straight down to her mother, and proffered her request timidly, and yet with a confidence as of one who has a larger voice of authority at her back.
"Please, mother, may I go over to Aunt Camilla's this afternoon ?" asked little Lucina.
And her mother, not knowing what principle of childish faith was involved, hesitated, knitting her small, dark face, which had no look like Lucina's, perplexedly.
"I don't know, child," said she.
"Please, mother!" "I am afraid you'll trouble your aunt, Lucina." "No, I won't, mother! I'll take my doll, and I'll play with her real quiet." "I am afraid your aunt Camilla will have something else to do." "She can do it, mother.

I won't trouble her--I won't speak to her--honest! Please, mother." "You ought to sit down at home this afternoon and do some work, Lucina." "I'll take over my garter-knitting, mother, and I'll knit ten times across." It happened at length, whether through effectual prayer, or such skilful fencing against weak maternal odds, that the little Lucina, all fresh frilled and curled, with her silk knitting-bag dangling at her side, and her doll nestled to her small mother-shoulder, stepping with dainty primness in her jostling starched pantalets, lifting each foot carefully lest she hit her nice morocco toes against the stones, went up the road to her aunt Camilla's.
Miss Camilla Merritt lived in the house which had belonged to her grandfather, called the "old Merritt house" to distinguish it from the one which her father had built, in which her brother Eben lived.
Both, indeed, were old, but hers was venerable, and claimed that respect which extreme age, even in inanimate things, deserves.

And in a way, indeed, this old house might have been considered raised above the mere properties of wood and brick and plaster by such an accumulation of old memories and associations, which were inseparable from its walls, to something nearly sentient and human, and to have established in itself a link 'twixt matter and mind.
Never had any paint touched its outer walls, overlapped with silver-gray shingles like scales of a fossil fish.

The door and the great pillared portico over it were painted white, as they had been from the first, and that was all.

A brick walk, sunken in mossy hollows, led up to the front door, which was only a few feet from the road, the front yard being merely a narrow strip with great poplars set therein.