"You mean you didn't hear anything, Barbara," interrupted a querulous, refined voice. "Your grammar is dreadful!" "I don't mean no such thing. I mean I didn't hear _nothin'_ and nothin' it is." And Barbara's meek, faded old eyes glared at the little old lady in the corner, if meek, faded blue eyes could glare. "Never mind her grammar, Lodema Ann. Why didn't you hear what they said? What was you doin' in the hall if you wasn't listenin'?" "I told you I was just passin' through and Mis' Smith called me in." "Don't you know nothin' about it--_nothin'!"_ "Nothin'. I've told you all I know. Can I take my teeth out now?" "No, Barbara; keep your teeth in till we've finished with you. A person can't understand a word you say with your teeth out, you gum your words so." "But they hurt me; they don't fit. I ain't had a new pair for twenty years and my jaws've shrunk." "Well, keep 'em in fer a while. They won't shrink any more fer a minit. Did they look like relations?" "Relations!" said a big, placid-looking woman who was knitting quietly. "Drusilla ain't got no relations. She ain't never had none." "She must have had some at one time. Everybody has relations--although _some_ people I know, had rather be without them than recognize the kind they got." The sour voiced old lady directed her tones toward the seat next to her. "If you're a meanin' me, Caroline, I want to tell you my relations is just as good as your'n, though we don't throw 'em down everybody's throat as some folks I know." "No," said another; "Drusilla has no family; she told me so herself. One day I was telling her about my family, about my father who was so well known in the State, and my brother who became the great--" "Now don't begin on your family, Maria. We know all about it. We ain't heard nothin' else fer the last three years. It's a good thing that some of the women in this home has something else to talk about except the greatness of their family, or we'd all be dead." The little old lady twisted her ball of yarn viciously, causing it to roll upon the floor, and when she had stiffly followed it and picked it from the corner her face was very red, either from the exertion of stooping or from the insult she felt she had received. "You're jealous--that's what's the matter with you! People who've no folks are always jealous of them who's had 'em; but old age has its liberties, I suppose, and we must pardon a great deal on account of it." "Are you speakin' of me, I'd like to know? I ain't but four years older'n you. I'm only seventy-nine and you was seventy-five last May, though you didn't want us to know it was your birthday. But I seen the date in the book some one sent you, and you can't deny it."