"Dear me! What a delightful place!" put in Mrs. Joy. "There's lots and lots of old truck," continued the implacable Miss Colishaw. "It all belonged to my mother and my grandmother and her mother before her. It's all up there; and there it's going to stay, if all the rich ladies in Newport come down to try to wheedle me out of it. Not a soul of them shall set foot in my attic." "Well, I must say that I think you very foolish," said Mrs. Joy, settling the wrists of her long gloves. "You're very poor, and these old things are no use to you in the way you live; and you'd far better take the money they would bring, and make yourself comfortable." Miss Colishaw was now pale with anger. "And who told you I was poor?" she demanded. "Did I ever come a-begging to you? Did I ever walk into your house to pry and rummage, and tell you that your things were no use? When I do you'll have a right to come here and behave as you have, but not a minute before. Use! They _are_ of use. They remind me of my family,--of the time I was young, when we all lived in this house together, before Newport grew to be a fashionable boarding-place and was spoiled for people of the old sort. If that's all the business you have with me, madam, I think we have got through with it." "Really, there's no occasion for being so very rude," said Mrs. Joy. "Rude!" Miss Colishaw gave an acrid laugh. "Mine ain't fashionable manners, I know; but I guess they're about as good." She opened the front door, and held it suggestively wide. Mrs. Joy swept through. "Come, Miss Arden," she called back over her shoulder. Candace could do nothing but look as apologetic as she felt. "I'm so sorry," she murmured, as she passed Miss Colishaw. "You haven't done anything. It's she who ought to be sorry," returned Miss Colishaw, and banged the door behind her as she passed through. "What a horrid old person!" said Mrs. Joy, who looked heated and vexed. "I never met any one so impertinent. And such a fool, too! Why, she takes in sewing, I am told, or makes cake,--some of those things. She's as poor as Job's turkey; yet there she sits, with those valuable things absolutely wasting in her poky old house, and refuses to sell them. I wish I had spoken more strongly to her! I declare, I've a good mind to go back and do it now. It is such perfect folly. She really ought to be reasoned out of it." "Oh, I wouldn't," urged Candace,--"I wouldn't go back. She was _so_ angry. I don't know what she would say if you did." "My dear, I don't care a red cent what she says. All the old women on the Point can't frighten _me_," declared Mrs. Joy. She reflected a little; then she gave up her intention.