"I hope I shall relish my vittles to-night," said Aunt Hitty, as she poured her tea into her saucer, and set the cup in her little blue "cup-plate;" "but I've had the neuralgy so in my face that it's be'n more 'n ten days sence I've be'n able to carry a knife to my mouth.... Your meat vittles is always so tasty, Miss Cummins. I was sayin' to Mis' Sawyer last week I think she lets her beef hang too long. Its dretful tender, but I don't b'lieve its hullsome. For my part, as I've many a time said to Si, I like meat with some chaw to it.... Mis' Sawyer don't put half enough vittles on her table. She thinks it scares folks; it don't me a mite,--it makes me 's hungry as a wolf. When I set a table for comp'ny I pile on a hull lot, 'n' I find it kind o' discourages 'em.... Mis' Southwick's hevin' a reg'lar brash o' house-cleanin'. She's too p'ison neat for any earthly use, that woman is. She's fixed clam-shell borders roun' all her garding beds, an' got enough left for a pile in one corner, where she's goin' to set her oleander kag. Then she's bought a haircloth chair and got a new three-ply carpet in her parlor, 'n' put the old one in the spare-room 'n' the back-entry. Her daughter's down here from New Haven. She's married into one of the first families o' Connecticut, Lobelia has, 'n' she puts on a good many airs. She's rigged out her mother's parlor with lace curtains 'n' one thing 'n' 'other, 'n' wants it called the drawin'-room. Did ye ever hear tell such foolishness? 'Drawin'-room!' s' I to Si; 'what's it goin' to draw? Nothin' but flies, I guess likely!' ... Mis' Pennell's got a new girl to help round the house,--one o' them pindlin' light-complected Smith girls, from the Swamp,--look's if they was nussed on bonny-clabber. She's so hombly I sh'd think 't would make her back ache to carry her head round. She ain't very smart, neither. Her mother sent word she'd pick up 'n' do better when she got her growth. That made Mis' Pennell hoppin' mad. She said she didn't cal'late to pay a girl three shillin's a week for growin'. Mis' Pennell's be'n feelin' consid'able slim, or she wouldn't 'a' hired help; it's just like pullin' teeth for Deacon Pennell to pay out money for anything like that. He watches every mouthful the girl puts into her mouth, 'n' it's made him 'bout down sick to see her fleshin' up on his vittles.... They say he has her put the mornin' coffee-groun's to dry on the winder-sill, 'n' then has 'em scalt over for dinner; but, there! I don' know 's there's a mite o' truth in it, so I won't repeat it. They went to him to git a subscription for the new hearse the other day. Land sakes! we need one bad enough. I thought for sure, at the last funeral we had, that they'd never git Mis' Strout to the graveyard safe and sound. I kep' a-thinkin' all the way how she'd 'a' took on, if she'd be'n alive. She was the most timersome woman 't ever was. She was a Thomson, 'n' all the Thomsons was scairt at their own shadders.