"With us," returned Miss Phosie curtly.
"I thought you wasn't going to take in strangers this season. What you going to buy this time? Last year you was able to get the new parlor carpet with the board money, and a proper nice one it is. Going to get curtains or chairs?"
"We don't cal'late to take anyone but Mr. Hilary," Miss Phenie declared, "and he'll be here only for the little time before he gets married."
"And you ain't going to keep on taking in strangers?"
"He ain't a stranger. He was a great friend of Mr. Williams and father's very fond of him. He'd feel more at home here than anywhere else, and we're all his friends, Zerviah," Miss Phosie spoke.
"I should think you wouldn't be such good friends with any of 'em, after their coming in for all Mr. Williams' money that ought to have gone to you, seeing he made his home in this house so many years."
Miss Phosie wheeled around, a red spot in each cheek. "There, you've said enough," she exclaimed. "There was nobody had a better right to his money than his own relations, and even if it had been left to us, father said after we found out she really was his relation, we couldn't have accepted it. I guess the legacy he left us was quite enough to show how he felt toward us Tibbetts."
"But there's Ora," persisted Miss Zerviah; "it would have come in good for her and the child."
"Ora won't suffer," said Miss Phenie, herself aroused to resentment. "There's enough of us to look after her, and when we're gone she won't be a pauper."
"She'll have others to look after her, if reports are true," returned Zerviah. "I hear Ned Symington goes around that way pretty often, and that he's terrible fond of the baby, young as it is."