"Why not call it the Fancy Shop once for all, and stick to that?" Kitty Ross asked him once; but Mr. Jason shook his head. "That would sound frivolous, Katharine!" he said. "Josiah and I are not frivolous!" They were not. They carried on their funny little business with a gravity and decorum that was all their own. Mr. Jason, as a rule, did the selling, matched the worsteds and yarns, advised the selection of patterns. Mr. Josiah embroidered. He had a club foot, and walked very lame, but his fingers were wonderfully nimble; we loved to watch him, as seated at his embroidery frame, half hidden by the green rep curtain which divided the front shop from the back (the latter was their living room), he sent his needle flying back and forth with what seemed to us miraculous speed. The Crewel Shop was a tiny building, tucked in between Adams's and the Mallow House. A minute kitchen behind the back-shop-sitting-room, a bedroom above:--that was all, but it was enough for the little gentlemen. They never wanted to lose sight of each other; they had only one opinion between them on any subject. In this they differed from the Miss Bygoods. They did not appeal to each other; they simply said, "We think it will rain to-morrow." This was carried so far that one or the other might be heard, in "grippy" weather, to say, "We have a cold!" and Cissy Sharpe insisted--but one did not always believe Cissy implicitly--that that she had seen Mr. Jason on several occasions try to walk lame like Mr. Josiah. This being so, it was no more than natural that both gentlemen should have loved the same lady. Our theory (a knot of school girls gossiping over their noonday buns and pickled limes, we had a theory to fit everything in town) was that they had never told their love, for fear of interfering with each other. If this was true, it might have been hard on Miss Egeria, supposing her to have cared for either; but we somehow doubted if she ever had. They were so very mild, and their wigs (exactly alike, and dressed every month by Mr. Beard the barber--so appropriately named, we thought!) were such a peculiar shade of pinkish brown, and so palpably made of jute! My mother, who detested gossip, put an end one fine day to all our romancing about still-remaining possibilities for "Miss Bygoods" by telling us the simple truth; that the dear ladies had both lost their lovers in the Civil War, and had never thought of matrimony since. She added that Kitty and I were a pair of silly girls, and would much better study our algebra lesson than gossip about people who presumably knew their own affairs; Kitty and I went off with hanging heads, but more imbued than ever with sentimental melancholy.