George Fred come in just then to fill my wood-box--his father was bound he should be named George and his mother hung out for Fred, so he got both onto him permanent. He was going to business college, and choring it for near the whole town. He used to swallow his supper and rush like mad from wood-box to cow all over the village. Nights when I heard a noise, I never thought it was a burglar any more. I turned over again and thought: "That's George Fred cutting somebody's grass." I never see a man more bent on getting himself educated. "George Fred," I says, "my grandniece Letty is coming to live with me. She's lost her folks. I thought we'd kind of try to be good to her." "Trust me," says George Fred. "My cousin Jed, he lost his folks too. I can tell her about him." The next day Letty came. I hadn't seen her for years. My land! when she got off the train, I never saw plainer. She was a nice little thing, but plain eyes, plain nose, plain mouth, and her hair--that was less than plain. But she was so smiling and so gentle that the plain part never bothered me a minute. "Letty," says I, "welcome home." Mis' Merriman and Mis' Sykes had gone to the depot with me. "Welcome home, child," says Mis' Merriman, and wiped her eyes! Mis' Merriman is human, but tactless. "Welcome home, you poor thing," says Mis' Sykes, and she sniffed. Everything Mis' Sykes does she ought to have picked out to do the way she didn't. But Letty, she took it serene enough. While we were getting her trunk, Mis' Sykes whispered to me: "Are you sure she's the right niece? She ain't got on a stitch of mourning." Sure enough, she hadn't. She wore a little blue dress. "Like enough she couldn't afford it," says Mis' Merriman. And we thought that must be it. They were both to stay for supper, and they'd each brought a little present for my niece. When she opened them, one was a black-edged handkerchief and the other was a package of mixed flower-seeds to plant next spring in her cemetery lot. Mis' Sykes and Mis' Merriman were both ready to cry all the while she untied them. But Letty smiled, serene, and thanked them, serene too, and put a pink aster from the table in her dress, and said, couldn't we go out and look at my flowers? And we went, Mis' Sykes and Mis' Merriman folding up their handkerchiefs and exchanging surprised eyebrows. At the back door we came, plain in the face, on George Fred, whittling up my shavings. "Two baskets of shavings, Miss Marsh, or one?" "I guess," says I, "you'll earn your education better if you bring me in two." George Fred never smiled. "I ain't earning my education any more, Miss Marsh," he says. "I've give it up. I can't make it go--not and chore it." "Then you can't be a bookkeeper, George Fred?" I says. "I've took a job delivering for the post-office store." "Tell me about it, won't you?" says Letty. George Fred told her a little about it, whittling my shavings.