Mrs. Bartow’s loud knock was now distinctly heard, and as Mrs. Howland had not quite finished her afternoon toilet, Aunt Debby herself went to answer the summons. Holding fast to her knitting, with the ball rolling after her, and Jessie’s kitten running after that, she presented herself before her visitor, courtesying very low, and asking if "she’d walk into the t’other room, or into the kitchen, where it was a great deal cooler." Mrs. Bartow chose the "t’other room," and taking the Boston rocker, asked "if Miss Graham was staying here?" "You mean Jessie," returned Aunt Debby. "It’s so cool this afternoon that she’s gone out ridin’ hossback in the mountains with Walter and Ellen. Be you any of her kin?" "I’m her grandmother, and have come to take her home," answered the lady, frowning wrathfully at the idea of Jessie’s riding with Walter Marshall. "I want to know!" returned Aunt Debby. "We’ll be desput sorry to lose her jest as Walter has come home, and he thinks so much of her, too." Mrs. Bartow was too indignant to speak, but Aunt Debby, who was not at all suspicious, talked on just the same, praising first Walter, then Ellen, then Jessie, and then giving an outline history of her whole family, even including Seth, who she said "allus was a good boy." If Aunt Debby expected a return of confidence she was mistaken, for Mrs. Bartow had nothing to say of her family, and after a little Aunt Debby began to question her. Was she city-born, and if not, where was she born? "That red mark on your chin makes me think of a girl, Patty Loomis by name, that I used to know in Hopkinton," she said, and the mark upon the chin grew redder as she continued: "I did housework there once, in Squire Fielding’s family, and this Patty that I was tellin’ you about done chores in a family close by. She was some younger than me, but I remember her by that mark, similar to your’n, and because she was connected to them three Thayers that was hung in York State for killin’ John Love. There was some han’some verses made about it, and I used to sing the whole of ’em, but my memory’s failin’ me now. I wonder what’s become of Patty. I haven’t thought of her before in an age. I heard that a rich old widder took her for her own child, and that’s all I ever knew. She was smart as steel, and could milk seven cows while I was milkin’ three. There they come, on the full canter of course. Ellen ’ll get her neck broke some day," and greatly to the relief of Mrs. Bartow she changed the conversation from Patty Loomis and the three Thayers who were hung, to the three riders dashing up to the gate, Jessie a little in advance, with her black curls streaming out from under her riding hat, and her cheeks glowing with the exercise.