"I donno what she'd do," said Ellen's mother, "with any more around here to pick up after. We're cluttered up enough, as it is." She was an old lady of whose outlines you took notice before your attention lay further upon her--angled waist, chin, lips, forehead, put on her a succession of zigzags. But her eyes were awake, and it was to be seen that she did not mean what she said and that she was looking anxiously at Ellen in the hope of having deceived her daughter. Ellen smiled at her brightly, and was not deceived. "I keep pretty busy," she said. Mis' Abby Winslow, who was not deceived either, hastened to the subject of Mary. "I should think Mary Chavah had enough to do, too," she said, "but she's going to take Lily's little boy. Had you heard?" "No," Ellen said, and stopped shaving silver polish. "He's coming in two weeks," Mis' Winslow imparted; "she told me so herself. She's got his room fixed up with owls on the wall paper. She's bought him a washbasin with a rim of puppies, and a red stocking cap. I saw her." "How old is he?" Ellen asked, and worked again. "I never thought to ask her," Mis' Winslow confessed; "he must be quite a little fellow. But he's coming alone from some place out West." "Hey, king and country," Ellen's father said; "I'd hate to have a boy come here, with my head the way it is." "And keeping the house all upset," Ellen's mother said, and asked Mis' Winslow some question about Mary; and when she turned to Ellen again, "Why, Ellen Bourne," she said, "you've shaved up every bit of that cleaning polish and we're most done cleaning." Ellen was looking at Mis' Winslow: "If you see her," Ellen said, "you ask her if I can't do anything to help." Later in the day, happening in at Mis' Mortimer Bates's, Mis' Winslow found Mis' Moran there before her, and asked what they had heard "about Mary Chavah." Something in that word "about" pricks curiosity its sharpest. "Have you heard about Mary Chavah?" "It's too bad about Mary Chavah." "Isn't it queer about Mary Chavah?"--each of these is like setting flame to an edge of tissue. Omit "about" from the language, and you abate most gossip. At Mis' Winslow's phrase, both women's eyebrows curved to another arc. Mis' Winslow told them. "Ain't that nice?" said Mis' Moran, wholeheartedly; "I couldn't bring up another, not with my back. But I'm glad Mary's going to know what it is...." Mis' Mortimer Bates was glad, too, but being by nature a nonconformist, she took exception. "It's an awful undertaking for a single-handed woman," she observed. But this sort of thing she said almost unconsciously, and the other two women regarded it with no more alarm than any other reflex. "It's no worse starting single-handed than being left single-handed," offered Mis' Winslow somewhat ambiguously. "Lots does that's thrifty." "Seems as if we could do a little something to help her get ready, seem's though," Mis' Moran suggested; "I donno what."