I didn’t say nothin’ more, for, as the greatest poets has sung, “the least said, the soonest mended.” But I ’rose, and with outward calmness, put on the tea kettle and potatoes, and opened the can of salmon, and jist as I put that over the stove, with some sweet cream and butter, if you’ll believe it, that very minute, she that was Alzina Ann Allen drove right up to the door, and come in. You could have knocked me down with a hen’s feather (as it were) my feelin’s wus such; but I concealed ’em as well as I could, and advanced to the door, and says I: “How do you do, Miss Richerson?”—she is married to Jenothen Richerson, old Daniel Richerson’s oldest boy. She is a tall, “spindlin’ lookin’” women, light complected, sandy-haired, and with big, light blue eyes. I hadn’t see her for nineteen yeers, but she seemed dredful tickled to see me, and says she: “You look younger, Samantha, than you did the first time I ever seen you.” “Oh, no!” says I, “that can’t be, Alzina Ann, for that is in the neighborhood of thirty years ago.” Says she, “It is true as I live and breathe; you look younger and handsomer than I ever see you look.” I didn’t believe it, but I thought it wouldn’t look well to dispute her any more, so I let it go; and mebby she thought she had convinced me that I did look younger than I did, when I was eighteen or twenty. But I only said, “That I didn’t feel so young anyway. I had spells of feelin’ mauzer.” She took off her things, she was dressed up awful slick, and Josiah helped bring in her trunk. And I told her just how mortified I wus about Josiah’s forgettin’ her letter, and her ketchin’ me unprepared. But, good Lord! she told me that she never in her hull life see a house in the order mine wus, never, and she had seen thousands and thousands of different houses. Says I, “I feel worked up, and almost mortified, about my settin’-room carpet bein’ up.” But she held up both hands (they wus white as snow, and all covered with rings). And says she, “If there is one thing that I love to see, Samantha, more than another, it is to see a settin’-room carpet up, it gives such a sort of a free, noble look to a room.” Says I, “The curtains are down in the spare bed-room, and I am almost entirely out of cookin’.” Says she, “If I had my way, I never would have a curtain up to a window. The sky always looks so pure and innocent somehow. And cookin’,” says she, with a look of complete disgust on her face. “Why, I fairly despise cookin’; what’s the use of it?” says she, with a sweet smile. “Why,” says I, reesonably, “if it wasn’t for cookin’ vittles and eatin’ ’em, guess we shouldn’t stand it a great while, none on us.”