"I don't seem to be able to place you. A relative of Miss Isabel's, did you say?" She laughed huskily. She was absorbed in putting more suet into her voice. "You make me think of uncle Peter Nudd," she replied, "when he was took up into Bunker Hill Monument. Albert took him, one o' the boys that lived in Boston. Comin' down, they met a woman Albert knew, an' he bowed. Uncle Peter looked round arter her, an' then he says to Albert, 'I dunno 's I rightly remember who that is!'" The parson uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. The old lady began to seem to him a thought too discursive, if not hilarious. "I know so many of the people in the various parishes"--he began, but he was interrupted without compunction. "You never'd know me. I'm from out West. Isabel's father's brother married my uncle--no, I would say my step-niece. An' so I'm her aunt. By adoption, 't ennyrate. We al'ays call it so, leastways when we're writin' back an' forth. An' I've heard how Isabel was goin' on, an' so I ketched up my bunnit, an' put for Tiverton. 'If she ever needed her own aunt,' says I--'her aunt by adoption--she needs her now.'" Once or twice, during the progress of this speech, the visitor had shifted his position, as if ill at ease. Now he bent forward, and peered at his hostess. "Isabel is well?" he began tentatively. "Well enough! But, my sakes! I'd ruther she'd be sick abed or paraletic than carry on as she does. Slack? My soul! I wisht you could see her sink closet! I wisht you could take one look over the dirty dishes she leaves round, not washed from one week's end to another!" "But she's always neat. She looks like an--an angel!" Isabel could not at once suppress the gratified note which crept of itself into her voice. "That's the outside o' the cup an' platter," she said knowingly. "I thank my stars she ain't likely to marry. She'd turn any man's house upside down inside of a week." The parson made a deprecating noise in his throat. He seemed about to say something, and thought better of it. "It may be," he hesitated, after a moment,--"it may be her studies take up too much of her time. I have always thought these elocution lessons"-- "Oh, my land!" cried Isabel, in passionate haste. She leaned forward as if she would implore him. "That's her only salvation. That's the makin' of her. If you stop her off there, I dunno but she'd jine a circus or take to drink! Don't you dast to do it! I'm in the family, an' I know." The parson tried vainly to struggle out of his bewilderment. "But," said he, "may I ask how you heard these reports? Living in Illinois, as you do--did you say Illinois or Iowa?"