“I’m yer father’s own sister,” she averred. “I ain’t denyin’ it none, though he did go an’ marry that thar Jessup woman, ez nobody could abide; an’ I hate ter see a peart gal like you-uns, ez air kin ter me, a-sp’ilin’ her eyes an’ a-cryin’ over a feller ez her folks don’t favor no-ways. Yer elders knows bes’, Lethe.” “Why, aunt Dely, you-uns _married_ a man ez yer elders never favored; they war powerful sot agin him.” Mrs. Purvine was clad in logic as in armor. “An’ look how it turned out,—him dead an’ me a widder woman!” Alethea stitched on silently for a moment. Then she observed with unusual softness, for she feared being accounted “sassy,” “I ’lowed I hed hearn ye say he war fifty-five year old, when he died.” “What’s fifty-five?” demanded Mrs. Purvine aggressively. “I knowed a man ez war a hunderd an’ ten.” And so Alethea was forced to acquiesce in the proposition that Mrs. Purvine’s consort had been cut off in the flower of his youth as a judgment for having some thirty years previous eloped with the girl of his heart. Both women looked conscious when a sudden step sounded in cautious ascent of the flight before the door, which illustrated so pointedly the truism that pride goes before a fall, and a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered, red-headed fellow strode in at the door. “Air yer eyesight failin’ ye, Jerry Price?” Mrs. Purvine admonished him. He was her husband’s nephew. “Thar’s Lethe Sayles.” Being called to order in this manner might well embarrass the young man, who had not expected to see Alethea, and who was rebuked for the dereliction before he was well in the room. He shambled up to shake hands with her with a somewhat elaborate show of cordiality. “Waal, Lethe,” he exclaimed, “ye air a sight fur sore eyes! Ain’t seen ye fur a month o’ Sundays.” “Looks like she hed sore eyes herself, bound with red ferretin’,” commented Mrs. Purvine gruffly. She often had a disposition, as she averred, to knock these young people’s heads together,—a sufficiently dangerous proceeding, for according to her account there were not two such hard heads in all Eskaqua Cove and Piomingo to boot. She had cherished an earnest desire to make a match between them, frustrated only by their failure to second the motion. They were well aware of this, and it impaired the ease of their relations, hampering even the exchange of the compliments of the season. “Young folks take the lead!” Mrs. Purvine often exclaimed, oblivious of her own sentimental history. “Ef nobody war wantin’ ’em ter marry they’d be runnin’ off with one another.” She had considered this breach of obedience on the part of her husband’s nephew a special instance of filial ingratitude, and had begun to remind him, and in fact to remember, all that she had done for him.