"Did she? I didn't know that I ever saw Great-grandmother."
"She saw you. She loved you better than any grandchild she lived to see, because you was named after her, I suppose. She used to say that conundrum was wrote about her, because she was four or five different characters all in one. Elizabeth when she was feeling high and mighty, Elspeth when she was good, Betsy when she had trouble keeping herself in, and Bess when she put on her airs and graces. Bessie was a real stylish name in her day."
"Why, I have different names for myself—Beth you know, and Betty, they are contractions of Elizabeth, too, but I never knew any one else who thought of themselves in different characters."
"Your great-grandmother was quite a remarkable woman. She was your grandfather's mother, but she seemed like my own. You look considerable like her, Elizabeth."
"I've always thought I resembled my own mother more than any one. She was an Endicott, you know."
"Your great-grandmother was a Jones. The Joneses had the name o' being one of the likeliest families in Crocker Neck."
"Did they?"
"And she had the reputation of having the prettiest manners and the kindest ways of any girl from here to Chatham. Your father takes after her in that. It was the first trouble that ever come to him when his gran'ma died, and he took it hard. He went out behind the henhouse and lay there a whole night; just the way he used to when he had trouble as a boy."
"But he was a grown man then, and I was born."
"He wasn't so much of a grown man that he didn't lay and blubber all night. He ain't so much of a grown man now that he wouldn't do the same thing if he was in the same kind of trouble."