"Wal, you kin keep yer butter, sence you're so sot on it, an' I'll take a leetle dust o' pork instead." "Let's see you take it!" said I. "I guess I'll speak 'ith yer ma. I shall git a consider'ble bigger piece, though I don't like ter add t' 'er steps." "Now look here, Miss Mimy," says I,--"if you'll promise not to ask for another thing, and to go right away, I'll get you a piece of pork." So I went down cellar, and fished round in the pork-barrel and found quite a respectable piece. Coming up, just as my head got level with the floor, what should I see but Miss Jemimy pour all the sugar into her bag and whip the bowl back on the shelf, and turn round and face me as innocent as Moses in the bulrushes. After she had taken the pork, she looked round a minute and said,-- "Wal, arter all, I nigh upon forgot my arrant. Here's a letter they giv' me fur Lurindy, at the post-office; ev'rybody else's afeard ter come up here";--and by-and-by she brought it up from under all she'd stowed away there. "Thet jest leaves room," says she. "For what?" says I. "Fur tew or three uv them eggs." I put them into her bag and said, "Now you remember your promise, Aunt Mimy!" "Lor' sakes!" says she, "you're in a mighty berry ter git me off. Neow you've got all you kin out uv me, the letter, 'n' the mitt'ns, I may go, may I? I niver see a young gal so furrard 'ith her elders in all my born days! I think Stephen Lee's well quit uv ye, fur my part, ef he hed to die ter du it. I don't 'xpect ye ter thank me fur w'at instruction I gi'n ye;--there's some folks I niver du 'xpect nothin' from; you can't make a silk pus out uv a sow's ear. W'at ye got thet red flag out the keepin'-room winder fur? 'Cause Lurindy's nussin' Stephen? Wal, good-day!" And so Aunt Mimy disappeared, and the pat of butter with her. I called Lurindy and gave her the letter, and after a little while I heard my name, and Lurindy was sitting on the top of the stairs with her head on her knees, and mother was leaning over the banisters. Pretty soon Lurindy lifted up her head, and I saw she had been crying, and between the two I made out that Lurindy'd been engaged a good while to John Talbot, who sailed out of Salem on long voyages to India and China; and that now he'd come home, sick with a fever, and was lying at the house of his aunt, who wasn't well herself; and as he'd given all his money to help a shipmate in trouble, she couldn't hire him a nurse, and there he was; and, finally, she'd consider it a great favor, if Lurindy would come down and help her.