Aunt 'Liza chuckled. Seventy-five years had made her bent and feeble, but her sense of fun and her sympathies were still fresh and quick. Every boy in the place felt that she was his friend.
In her tumble-down cottage on the outskirts of the town she lived alone, excepting when her drunken, thriftless son Henry came back to be taken care of awhile. She supported herself by selling vegetables, chickens, and eggs.
Most people had forgotten that she had once lived in much better circumstances. Whatever longings she may have had for the prosperity of her early days, no one knew about them. Perhaps it was because she never talked of herself, and was so ready to listen to the complaints of others, that everybody went to her with their troubles.
The racing calves soon came to a halt. In a few minutes the procession came back, and halted quietly in front of the little garden gate. Jeff was leading the calves, which looked around with mild, reproachful eyes, as if wondering at the disturbance.
"Aunt 'Liza," said Jeff, "can you lend me a strap or something? The reins broke. That's how they happened to get away from me."
"You can take the rope hanging up in the well-shed if you'll bring it back before night."
"All right, Aunt 'Liza. I'll do as much for you some day. Just look at Daisy and Bolivar! We're going to take them to the fair next fall, and enter them as the fastest trotting calves on record."
"Boys are such harum-scarum creatures," said the old woman, as she bent painfully over her weeding again. "Likely enough Jeff'll never think of that rope another time."
But after dinner, as she sat out on a bench by the back door, smoking her cob-pipe, Jeff came around the house with the rope on his arm.