Albert smiled with all his face but the eyes, and slightly lifting his hands from his fat knees, turned them palms up, in mute deprecation of his aunt’s unreasonableness. The gesture was as near the shoulder-shrug as the self-contained lawyer ever permitted himself to go. It was a trifle, but it angered the old maid enough to remove the last vestige of hesitation from her tongue: “Well, ef yeh _don’t_ knaow what I mean, then I’ll tell yeh! I mean that ef th’ Fairchilds are goin’ to be a Dearborn caounty fam’ly, ’n’ hole their heads up amongst folks, ther’s got to be a change o’ some sort right away. Your father’s let everything slide year after year, till there’s pesky little lef’ naow to slide on. He’s behine hand agin in money matters, even with th’ Pratt mortgage on top of t’others. What’s wuss, it’s in everybody’s maouth. They’ve left him off th’ board at th’ cheese-factory this year, even; of course they say, it’s cuz he never ’tended th’ meetin’s--but I knaow better! It’s jis cuz Lemuel Fairchild’s goin’ deown hill, ’n’ the farm’s goin’ to rack ’n’ ruin, ’n’ ev’rybuddy knaows it. Jis’ think of it? Why, ’twas th’ Fairchilds made that cheese-factory, ’n’ it’s allus gone by aour name, ’n’ we used to sen’ th’ milk of a hundred ’n’ thirty caows there--almost as much as all th’ rest of ’em put togither--’n’ ez I said to Leander Crump, when he was squirmin’ raound tryin’ to make me b’lieve they didn’t mean nothin’ by droppin’ Lemuel aout o’ th’ board, says I--‘nobuddy ever ’spected a table spoonful o’ water in aour milk!’--’n’ he colored up, _I_ tell yeh!” “No doubt” said Albert, impassively. Miss Sabrina paused to mentally retrace her argument, and see if this remark had any special bearing. She could discover none, and grew a little angrier. “Well, then, th’ question’s right here. My father, your grand father, made a name fer hisself, and a place for his fam’ly, here in Dearborn caounty, second to nobuddy. Fer years ’n’ years I kin remember thet th’ one question people ast, when it was proposed to dew anything, was ‘what does Seth Fairchild think ’baout it?’ He went to th’ Senate twice; he could ’a gone to Congress from this dees-trick time ’n’ time agin, if he’d be’n a mine to. Ev’rybuddy looked up to him. When he died, all of a suddent, he lef’ Lemuel th’ bes’ farm, th’ bes’ stock, th’ bes’ farm haouse, fer miles raound. Well, thet’s forty year ago. I’ve lived here threw it all. I’ve swallered my pride every day in th’ week, all thet time. I’ve tried to learn myself a humble spirit--but I’ve hed to see this place, and the fam’ly, going daown, daown, daown!” There were tears in the old maid’s eyes now, as she spoke, tears of mortification and revolt against her helplessness, for she seemed to read the failure of her appeal in the placid face of her nephew, with its only decent pretence of interest. She went on, with a rising voice: