"Then Mrs. Farnham don't want her girl to come here, is that it?" inquired aunt Hannah, setting the gathers in a neck-gusset with the point of her needle, which she dashed in and out as if it had been a poniard, and that cotton cloth her enemy's heart. "You always hit the nail right on the head when you do strike, aunt Hannah. She don't want her gal to come here, nor your gal to come there; that's the long and short on it." "What for?" inquired uncle Nathan, moving uneasily in his great wooden chair. "Isn't our little gal good enough?" "Good enough, gracious me, I wonder if she thinks anybody in these parts good enough for her to wipe her silk slippers on? Why, she speaks of Judge Sharp as if he was nobody, and of the country here as if God hadn't made it." "But what has she against that poor child?" inquired aunt Hannah, sternly. "She ain't handsome, and she came from the Poor-House; isn't that enough?" answered Salina, stretching forth her hand, and counting each word down with a finger into the palm of her hand as if it had been a coin. "She's homely, she came from the poor-house, and more than all, she lives here." "So she remembers us, then?" said aunt Hannah, resting the point of her needle in a gather while she steadied her hand. "Yes, you are the only people she has asked about, and her way of doing it was snappish enough, I can tell you." "I have not seen this woman in sixteen years," said aunt Hannah, thoughtfully, "we change a good deal in that time." "She hasn't changed much, though; fallen away a little; her red cheeks have turned to a kind of papery white; her mouth has grown thin and _meachen_; there's something kind o' lathy and unsartin about her; as for temper that's just the same, only a little more so, sharp as a muskeeters bill, tanterlizing as a green nettle. The rattlesnake is a king to her; there's something worth while about his bite, it's strong and in arnest, it kills a feller right off; but she keeps a nettling and harrering one about all the time, without making an end on't, I wish you could see her with that poor little gal, dressing her up as if she was a rag-baby, scolding her one minute, kissing her the next, calling her here, sending her there, I declare to man, it's enough to put one out of conceit with all womankind." "Where is Mrs. Farnham's son now?" inquired uncle Nathan, to whose genial heart the sharp opinions of his visitor came unpleasantly; "he ought to be a smart young fellow by this time." "I don't know who he'd take after then," observed the housekeeper, drily. "His father was an enterprising man, understood business, knew how to take care of what he made," said uncle Nathan. "We never had many smarter men than Farnham here in the mountains." "Farnham was a villain!" exclaimed aunt Hannah, whose face to the very lips had been growing white as she listened. Uncle Nathan started as if a shot had passed through his easy-chair. "Hannah!"