"I see you don't neglect my knocker—shines like gold."
"Go long, Marse Efan!" Her rich chuckling bubbled over. "Tooby suah I ain't disremember dat ar knocker o' yourn—not oncet in twenty yeah."
"Why do you have those little squares of zinc nailed all over your kitchen floor, Aunt Jerusha?"
"Law sakes alive!"—she rolled and shook—"dey's a despit lot o' rats down sullar, an' I can't b'ar 'em up yere nohow."
Ethan was the only one of the party outside to join her cheerful laughter. But the ruinous state of the property was too obvious for him to realize that he could possibly be expected to overlook it.
When they went in-doors Ethan followed his grandmother to her own room, where he had sat with her that first evening so long ago and heard that Jerusha was his aunt. They had a long and eminently satisfactory talk until, towards its end, Ethan straightforwardly introduced the subject of the evident need of repairs, and the pleasure it would give him to—
He was "quite mistaken," she interrupted, drawing herself up, and, to his amazement, receiving the suggestion at the point of the sword. There was nothing wrong with the place. He had his head full of châteaus and palaces. Of course, this was quite an ordinary—
"No, no, it's not the least ordinary. It's picturesque and beautiful; but it—you must see for yourself it's falling to decay."
"Like ourselves, it doesn't get younger; but it naturally suits us better than it can hope to suit you."
He gave up his point for the time being, finding a sudden flaw in his own taste, that could so soon after his arrival suggest that anything here could be changed for the better.