[_Those readers who are familiar with "Timothy's Quest" will remember, perhaps, that Aunt Hitty Tarbox is a village seamstress and dressmaker who goes out by the day in Pleasant River and Edgewood, her specialty being the making-over of boys' clothes. Perhaps they will recall, too, that she uses her needle, her scissors, and her tongue with equal rapidity, and that each one of them is about as sharp as the other, although she is a member of the Orthodox church in good and regular standing. After thirty years' life in Pleasant River, that quiet village has proved too small for her genius, and she has removed to the more thriving town of Bixby Centre, an imaginary place located anywhere in the State of Maine. Mrs. Strout, an old friend from Milliken's Mills, has come to visit Bixby for a day or two; and it is during a call upon Aunt Hitty that she gains a general idea of the Author's Reading which has just occurred. Imagine Aunt Hitty, then, in a comfortable sewing-chair, her lapboard on her knee, workbasket within reach, tongue in excellent running order, and one eye always on the road which goes past her window--for she is one of the few persons who can make over boys' clothes, conduct a fire of conversation, and miss nothing that goes on in the outside world, all at once._] MONOLOGUE: Mrs. Silas Tarbox, otherwise Aunt Hitty, speaking: "Step right in, Mis' Strout. I should 'a' come over to see you before this, but I can't stir from my chair to-day, my foot's so lame. I'm glad you brought your fancy-work, for I'm so behindhand with my sewin' I don't dass to lay down my needle. We've had the busiest week of the whole summer, and Si not bein' through with his hayin' we had to keep right along with it, entertainment or no entertainment, so I had work inside as well as outside the house. "Oh, yes, the Readin' was a great success, as everything is in Bixby Centre, when we get round to it; but it made lots o' work, I can tell you. It's kind o' queer you don't have none o' these things over to Milliken's Mills--but there! there ain't many small places that's got the talent we have here to the Centre, and talent allers attracts talent, somehow. Si 'n' I lived for thirty years in Pleasant River, and we know well enough what a dull place that was. They couldn't even get up a funeral there, without I planned it and managed it. "No, the entertainment wa'n't for the church; it was for the benefit of the Winter Night Reading Club, but, of course, we had to give it in one of the three meetin'-houses, for we ain't got any hall. Oh, yes, I'm a member of the club, an' I was real pleased when they asked me to join it, for though I never was a great hand at readin' to myself I like to git into a rockin'-chair and hear other folks read out loud.