hen he came for one of his brief
visits in the summer, had somehow put a check to love's beginning. At
least, Clyde had seen Nellie only once after his uncle went away, and
had speedily closed the old house and followed him.

"There, Ellen," said Lydia Vesey, from a rare softness. "I guess
nobody'd ever say 't you was growin' old. They'd only think you was
sort o' palin' out, that's all, same 's a white dress is different from
a pink one."

"Well, now, I'll say my say, an' done with it," remarked Caddie
Musgrave, with her accustomed violence. "I'm ready to grow old when my
time comes, an' if I get there by the road some have took before me, I
guess I sha'n't be put under the sod by any vote o' town-meetin'. As I
look back, seems to me 'most all them that's gone before us has had
their uses to the last. Think o' gramma Jakes! Why, she hadn't chick nor
child of her own left to bless her, an' see how she was looked up to,
an' how every little tot in town thought he's made if he could be sent
to gramma Jakes's to do an arrant, an' she give him a pep'mint or a
cooky. 'Twa'n't the pep'mint though. 'Twas because she was a real sweet
nice old lady, that's what 'twas."

"Yes, I remember gramma Jakes," said Anna Dutton, from the corner. She
was a round, pink, near-sighted little person, who had tried to cure
herself of stammering by speaking very slowly, and now scarcely talked
at all because she had found how unwilling her more robust and
loquacious neighbors were to give her the right of way in her hindering
course. "Seems if I could see her now standin' there on her front porch,
her little handkercher round her neck--"

Caddie broke in upon this reminiscence, according to a custom so
established that Anna Dutton only kept her mouth open for an instant, as
if the opportunity for speech might return to her, and then quite calmly
settled back with an air of pleased attention.

"They're afraid o' gettin' old an' they're afraid o' gettin' fleshy,"
Caddie announced. "Well, there's no crime in gettin' old, now is there?
An' if there is, you can't put a stop to 't in any court o' law. An' as
for bein' fleshy, if you be you be, an' you might as well turn to an'
have your clo'es made bigger an' say no more."

Mrs. Pray presented her mite with her accustomed severity of gloom, as
if she had selected the words most carefully and wished to have it
understood that they were the choicest she had to offer.

"I was fryin' doughnuts, a