It's just your reflection
in the looking glass." "Why--why so it is," she stammered, brushing one brown hand across her
eyes. "I was just fooling." She jumped to her feet and started bustling
about like her old indefatigable self. "Now run along and fill the wood
box. Then wash your hands and help me peel these 'taters. I'm way late
with supper, what with having to stop to talk--I mean I must have set
down to rest and went to sleep." Then began one of the strangest battles in the history of fairie--two
children against a mirror, for of course I enlisted poor Annette
on my side. I tried to explain to Aunt Ellen but she merely smiled
understandingly and patted me with one fat hand while her prominent
eyes fluttered back to the glass. I wrote a scrawl to Uncle Bill, my favorite, and he left his hardware
store the next weekend and came down from the city with a little
chinwhiskered doctor. Since psychiatry was almost unknown in those days
the physician looked at Maw's tongue, thumped her chest, asked her a
few questions, which she answered with sly humor, and pronounced her
sound. "I think it's you that's imagining things, boy," said Uncle Bill when
he took me for a walk in the woods after one of Maw's wonderful chicken
dinners. "We're all upset by Paw's going. Just don't worry about
things." "But Uncle Bill," I protested. "I heard what I saw." "I know--I know." His lean shrewd face had a worried look, I noticed
with an upward glance. "You're a highstrung youngster. Write me often,
though. And I'll come down every time I can. Say--look!" I could almost
hear him sigh with relief at an opportunity to change the subject. "There's a patch of violets already. Let's pick some and take them back
to Maw and Ellen. It'll make them happy." After that, of course, I had to carry on the fight with only Annette to
help. We tried everything--went right home when we could have been playing
with the other kids after school--got Maw to sing for us by the
hour--read out loud to her--inveigled her into the spring woods to pick
flowers and look for birds' nests. Oh, it was a brave battle put up by
a twelve- and a ten-year-old against something alien and, somehow, far
wiser than we. *       *       *       *       *

At first Maw managed to banish her visions when she heard us come into
the yard. Then we had to strive hard and harder to break the spell. And one day we both became twins! It happened when Annette and I came home one time the teacher took
sick. It was much earlier than usual and we caught Maw rocking happily
before the mirror, gossiping with her reflection. "I'm so glad you brought your own children to visit me today, Mrs.
Jones," she exclaimed the moment our images appeared in the glass
behind hers. "My Tommy and Annette don't have many playmates, we live
so far from any neighbors. I'm sure they'll be much happier now." "Aw, Maw," Annette protested as we instinctively ducked out of range. "Those ain't teal children. You're just looking at us in the looking
glass." But the damage had been done. For once in my life I saw grandmother
grow really angry. "I'll have none of your sass, Annette," she stormed, rising and
straightening her back until it cracked. "Mrs. Jones, I don't know what
has come over my younguns. Now, will you two say you're sorry or must I
whip you right before company?" Shamefaced and shaken, we apologized to the empty air. And from that
hour Mrs. Jones and her ghostly brats became our constant companions. At first we hated and resented them, then, childlike, accepted the
inevitable and even made the best of it. Sometimes, so real did Maw
make the delusion become, we almost believed with her that the shadows
were real. On rainy weekends we found ourselves inventing games to play
with them. Perhaps, in time, we might have gone to inhabit her world of
dreams. But Maw's health was failing rapidly. We tried to ignore the fact
as she did, though it soon became pitifully obvious that Paw's loss
had broken the iron will which had sustained her through so many
adversities. Aunt Ellen more and more ceded her place before the mirror
as she helped Annette and me do the lighter chores and even some of the
cooking. Bill Pailey came over every day now--Maw never paraded her shadows when
_he_ was around, knowing that the bluff farmer was somehow not to be
trusted with such dream stuff. And the money which aunts and uncles
contributed, willingly or grudgingly, was more and more needed to fill
the gaps in our finances. "Tommy," Annette said to me one afternoon as we were plodding home from
school along the muddy dogwood-bordered road. "What happens to people
when they die?" "Aw, I don't know," I muttered, kicking a loose stone with my
copper-toed shoe. "Maw says the angels come and get 'em and take 'em to
heaven." "But the angels didn't come and get Dickie." Dickie was a wry-necked
pin-feathered rooster that Paw had taught to come when we called, dig
fishing worms for us and jump through a barrel hoop. "I went to look
at Dickie's grave the other day. A dog had dug him up. There were just
feathers--and bones." "Aw," I said. "Chickens don't have souls. But Maw says that when Miz
Pailey died last year she was there and she saw--"

"We're going to be awful lonesome, though," my sister sighed. "And
you'll have to get up and make the fire every morning." "What you mean?" I challenged. "Nothing. Let's run. I'm cold." And she was off in a flutter of long
legs, gingham and pale yellow braids. After such a conversation I hardly dared enter the house that day. When
I did go in, after fooling around at the barn as long as possible, I
found Maw singing lustily about some man who had gone to the gallows
with a white dove riding on his shoulder to prove him innocent of the
murder of his sweetheart. "Where's Mrs. Jones and her kids?" I asked, flabbergasted. "They went home," said Maw. "I told them to. Can't spend all my time
gassing with a ugly old woman like that when I've got housecleaning to
do." And until long after sunset she made the feathers fly from the old
pillows, beat up the crackling corn-shuck mattresses, sprinkled and
swept the floors and polished the meager kitchen utensils till they
shone. Annette and I, feeling as if we had been released from jail,
helped with a will. Aunt Ellen, reinstated in her rocking chair,
frowned and sneezed by turns and said nothing as always. "There," said Maw at last as she hung the home-made broom behind the
kitchen range and sank into a chair, looking suddenly more worn and old
than I had ever seen her. "There. It's all swept and garnished for when
the bridegroom cometh." "The bridegroom?" I glanced at her sharply. "I was just fooling again, son." She stared down at her big-veined
hands as they lay clasped in her lap. "Must be getting old, I guess. I
just meant that I have a feeling your Uncle Bill will come tomorrow. And you know how fussy he is about everything being neat and clean."