"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 week ago Saturday, an' Mis' Denny come along with that lady friend o' hers that's down here over Sunday. I offered 'em each a warm doughnut, an' they was possessed to take it. They'd been walkin' quite a spell, an' they'd called for a drink o' water. They said 'twas the time in the forenoon when they drinked. But they looked at the doughnuts good an' hard, an' they says: 'No. It's fattenin',' says they. 'It's fattenin'.'" "Yes," said Caddie, with a scornful cadence, "I'll warrant they did. That's what they said about two things out o' three, soon 's the hands moved round to meal-time. 'It's fattenin'!' Oh, I'm sick an' tired to death of it! I ain't goin' to be dead till I be dead, thinkin' about it all the time, not if I can keep my thoughts inside o' me an' my tongue in my head. So there!" "Well, now," said Martha Waterman, with the mildness calculated to smooth a troubled situation, "hadn't we better be gettin' round to thinkin' what we'll do to earn us a mite more money for the fund? Seems if, now they've done so well by us, we'd ought to up an' show what we can do--a harvest festival, mebbe, or a sociable for all, an' charge for tickets."