quite primpy herself, and said that she guessed she could carry what
style there was in our family (being a Glenwood, and having married
beneath her), and that Uncle Silas and the rest of us would do pretty
well if we managed to keep up with the work she laid out for us; and
that was so.

[Illustration: "SHE WOULD MAKE WINTERS HELP MY YOUNG LADY COUSIN DO THE
DISHES"]

"She kept Uncle Silas and Winters--that was the name of the hired
man--busier than anybody, as she never quite got over the trip to town
and the way they came home. She used to set Uncle Silas to peeling
potatoes, after supper, for next morning, and would make Winters help my
young lady cousin do the dishes, which you would not think he would
like; but he did. Aunt Melissy didn't know that he would like it so
much, or she would have set him at the potatoes, and Uncle Silas at the
dishes.

"I don't suppose any of you can guess why our hired man wanted to help
my cousin, Minta Glenwood Lovejoy, with the dishes. I couldn't, even
after I saw that he was so fond of the job that he could hardly wait
until the supper was cleared away and it was ready for him. I used to
wonder how that young man, brought up in town, could take so to such
work, and then, after a while, I got to wondering why it took him and
Minty Glenwood, as we always called her, so long to get through.

[Illustration: "UNCLE SILAS HAD GONE TO SLEEP WITH A POTATO IN HIS
HAND"]

"That was the first thing Aunt Melissy wondered, too. She generally knit
a little, after supper, and went to sleep over it, and would wake up
suddenly and look at the clock and begin to knit as fast as she could,
so we would not think she had been asleep. But one night she slept a
long time, and when she looked at the clock it was so late that she
said, 'Land's sakes, it's bedtime!' and she went over and shook Uncle
Silas, who had gone to sleep with a potato in his hand, and scolded him
to bed, and shook up the rest of us, and then noticed that Cousin
Minty and Winters were missing, and went straight to the kitchen door
and opened it, and found them sitting close together, and Winters
holding Cousin Minty's hand and telling her that unless she would set up
housekeeping with him he would go back to the city and lead a fearful
life; and Cousin Minty Lovejoy looking very scared.

"But she didn't look half as scared as she did when she saw Aunt
Melissy, nor the hired man, either. He had to make two trials before he
co