I—AT THE LEES
Aunt Ann, be we goin' to the spellin' to-night at the Block schoolhouse?”
Jim Lee always called his wife “Aunt Ann.” So did everybody except her daughter Lydia. She called Aunt Ann “Mother.” But to Jim Lee and the other inhabitants of Stowe Township, she was “Aunt Ann Lee.”
As Jim Lee asked Aunt Ann the question, he threw down the armful of maple wood and retreated to the back door to stamp the snow off his boots.
“I want to know,” he said, “so's to do the chores in time.”
Aunt Ann was chopping mince-meat. She was a clean, beautiful woman of the buxom sort. Her eyes were very blue, while her hair was very black with not a strand of silver, for all her forty-seven years. Jim Lee held Aunt Ann in great respect. Aunt Ann on her part was a tender soul and true, although Jim Lee had found her quite firm at times.
“Now and then she's a morsel hard on the bit,” said Jim Lee, descriptively.
Perhaps the two old-maid Spranglers meant the same thing when they said: “There never was a body with blue eyes and black hair who didn't have the snap in 'em.”
“Yes,” replied Aunt Ann to Jim Lee's question “yes, of course we'll go. I've got to see Mrs. Au about some rag carpets she's weavin' for me, and she be there. Better get the Morgan colt and the cutter ready, father; we'll go in that.”
“That'll only hold two,” said Jim Lee. “How Lide goin' to go?”