"An' ye take yer pay out uv the store? Varry reasonable. I wuz thinkin' uv tryin' my han' myself;--business's ruther dull, folks onkimmon well this fall. Heow many strings yer gwine ter give me fur the yarbs?" Then mother went up garret to get the apples and spread the herbs to dry, and Lurindy wanted some different needles, and went after her. Stephen'd just heaped the fire, and the great blaze was tumbling up the chimney, and Miss Mimy lowered her head and looked over her great horn-bowed spectacles at me. "Wal, Emerline Ruggles," says she, after a while, going back to her work, "you've lost all _your_ pink cheeks!" I suppose it took me rather sudden, for all at once a tear sprung and fell right down my work. I saw it glistening on the bright needles a minute, and then my eyes filmed so that I felt there was more coming, and I bent down to the fire and made believe count my narrowings. After all, Aunt Mimy was kind of privileged by everybody to say what she pleased. But Stephen didn't do as every one did, always. "Emmie's beauty wasn't all in her pink cheeks, Miss Mimy," I heard him say, as I went into the back-entry to ask mother to bring down the mate of my sock. "Wal, wherever it was, there's precious little of it left!" said she, angry at being took up, which maybe she never was before in her life. "You don't agree with her friends," said he, cutting in the stick the great mole on the side of her nose; "_they_ all think she's got more than ever she had." Mother tossed me down the mate, and I went back. "Young folks," said Aunt Mimy, after two or three minutes' silence, "did ye ever hear tell o' 'Miah Kemp?" "Any connection of old Parson Kemp in the other parish?" asked Stephen.