"Exactly. That's Gertrude. No more flavor than a frozen pear. If she had one distinguishing peculiarity, good or bad, I believe I should like her better. But I'm sorry for the woman."
"Sorry enough to stand a winter of her?"
"If we hadn't just been through this moving! A new house and all,—nobody knows how the flues are yet, or whether we can heat a spare room. She hasn't had a home, though, since Cousin Dorothy died. But I was thinking about you, you see."
"O, she can't hurt me. She won't want the library, I suppose; nor my slippers, and the small bootjack. Let her come."
My wife sighed a small sigh of relief out from the depths of her hospitable heart, and the little matter was settled and dismissed as lightly as are most little matters out of which grow the great ones.
I had just begun to dream that night that Gertrude Fellows, in the shape of a large wilted pear, had walked in and sat down on a dessert plate, when Allis gave me a little pinch and woke me.
"My dear, Gertrude has one peculiarity. I never thought of it till this minute."
"Confound Gertrude's peculiarities! I want to go to sleep. Well, let's have it."
"Why, you see, she took up with some Spiritualistic notions after her mother's death; thought she held communications with her, and all that, Aunt Solomon says."
"Stuff and nonsense!"