"After a while Jim an' the ole man they went out to the stable, and then the pore little darlin' says, "'Oh, Aunt Nancy, I'd be the happiest woman in the world if Jim and me was livin' by ourselves! Mother Curtis is a good woman, but somehow I can't please her, an' I try so hard. Sometimes I'm so tired I can't sleep or eat, an' she thinks I'm puttin' on airs, she calls it, an' she's allus saying she pities a man with a do-nothin', whiny wife.' "'It's a shame!' says I; 'why don't you tell Jim, and coax him to get another place?' "'Oh, Aunt Nancy,' she says, wipin' her purty eyes, 'I can't bear to make trouble, and what would Pap Curtis do? He's awful good to us. He brings me candy and sometimes oranges from town, and gives 'em to me when she don't see him, and he often helps me, too; gets wood and water and milks the cows--but there's Jim with the buggy,' and off she went. "I made up my mind to have another talk with Jim Curtis, but laws! we never can tell. The ole man he took the bed with rheumatiks in October, and I never seen anybody much fur three months, and then our Sarah's baby was born, and I was over there awhile, an' my own worriments drove other people's clean out of my head, till one day 'long the last of February Jonathan came in (he'd be'n to town for somethin' or other), an' says he, "'Nancy, Rhody's got a boy!' "Laws! I was jist as s'prised as ef I'd never thought of sich a thing, an' says I, 'Who tole you?' "'Ole man Curtis,' says he, 'an' he's that sot up he wants you to come right over.' "'An' so I will,' says I. 'The blessed darlin'; an' it's a boy, an' our Sarah's is a boy, too. Well, that beats me.' An' I 'low 'twas odd, Mis' Johnson;" and Mrs. Johnson "'lowed" it was, too, and the story went on: "In a day or two I managed to go over to the Curtis place, an' though Mary Ann Curtis didn't seem over-pleased to see me, I'll say that for her, she treated me well enough, and asked me right up stairs to see Rhody and the baby. My! but my girl was glad to see me! "'Aunt Nancy,' she says, 'is Sarah's baby bigger'n mine?' and she turned down the kiver and showed me the littlest mite of a boy, with such a wrinkled old face! I wonder what does make a pore weakly baby look so much like old folks, anyhow. Did you ever notice it, Mis' Johnson?" "Oh, yes, often," said Mrs. Johnson. "There was my Silas, looked just like his Grandfather Johnson when he was born. But was her baby weakly?" "I saw it was in a minute," said Aunt Nancy, "but I never let on. I looked at the baby an' praised it all I could--said it wasn't as big as Sary's, but size was nothin'. "Mis' Curtis she sniffed sort o' scornful, an' says she, 'The child might have been bigger ef its mother'd knowed how to take keer of herself;' an' then she says, 'Well, I ain't no time to be a-foolin'. I must go to work.' "'I suppose you've got a girl?' says I.