"'Mandy, what be you cryin' for? You come here an' tell me what 'tis, an' I'll see to't. You'll spile your eyes, 'Mandy, if you take on so."
"There, there, ma'am! 'tain't anything," said Amanda, hurrying over to her chair and patting her on the shoulder. "We was just havin' a little spat,—Aunt Melissa an' me; but we've got all over it. Don't you want to knit on your garter a little while now?"
But the old lady kept her glazed eyes fixed on Amanda's face.
"Be you well to-day, 'Mandy?" she said, wistfully. "If you ain't well, you must take suthin'."
"There, there! don't you make a to-do, an' she'll come round all right," said Aunt Melissa, moving her chair about so that it faced the old lady. "I'll tell her suthin' to take up her mind a little." And she continued, in the loud voice which was her concession to Mrs. Green's feebleness of intellect, "They've got a boarder over to the Blaisdells'."
Mrs. Green sat up straight in her chair, smoothed her apron, and looked at her sister with grateful appreciation.
"Do tell!" she said, primly.
"Yes, they have. Name's Chapman. They thought he was a book agent fust. But he's buyin' up old dishes an' all matter o' truck. He wanted my andirons, an' I told him if I hadn't got a son in a Boston store, he might ha' come round me, but I know the vally o' things now. You don't want to sell them blue coverlids o' yourn, do ye?"
Aunt Melissa sometimes asked the old lady questions from a sense of the requirements of conversation, and she was invariably startled when they elicited an answer.
"Them coverlids I wove myself, fifty-five years ago come next spring," said Mrs. Green, firmly. "Sally Ann Mason an' me used to set up till the clock struck twelve that year, spinnin' an' weavin'. Then we had a cup or two o' green tea, an' went to bed."