“They had sarvints here in them days, an’ ol’ Mr. Stower—he was still in practice at the law—had lashin’s of company. I won’t say but that Mrs. Maltby-that-was, made him a good wife, and sat at the foot of his table, and poured tea out o’ that big solid silver urn like she’d been to the manner born. But Sally was as sassy and perky as a nuthatch in flytime.
“We other gals couldn’t git along with her no-how. Me bein’ here so much right at the first of it,” pursued Miss Titus, “sort o’ made me an’ Sally intimate, as ye might say, whether we’d ever been so before, or not. After Ma Britton got through her big job here Sally would sometimes have to come around to our house—Ma Britton left me that little cottage I live in—I ain’t ashamed to tell it—I hadn’t any folks, an’ never had, I reckon. Like Topsy, I ‘jes’ growed.’ Well! Sally would come around to see me, and she’d invite me to the old Corner House here.
“She never invited me here when there was any doin’s—no, Ma’am!” exclaimed Miss Titus. “I wonder if she remembers them times now? She sits so grim an’ lets me run on ha’f a day at a time, till I fairly foam at the mouth ’ith talkin’ so much, an’ then mebbe all she’ll say is: ‘Want your tea now, Ann?’ ’Nuff ter give one the fibbertygibbets!
“In them days I speak of, she could talk a blue streak—sartain-sure! And she’d tell me how many folks ‘we had to dinner’ last night; or how ‘Judge Perriton and Judge Mercer was both in for whist with us last evening.’ Well! she strutted, and tossed her head, an’ bridled, till one time there was an awful quarrel ’twixt her an’ Peter Stower.
“I was here. I heard part of it. Peter Stower was a good bit older than Sally Maltby as you gals may have heard. He objected to his father’s marriage—not because Mrs. Maltby was who she was, but he objected to anybody’s coming into the family. Peter was a born miser—yes he was. He didn’t want to divide his father’s property after the old man’s death, with anybody.
“I will say for Peter,” added Miss Titus, “going off on a tangent” as she would have said herself, had she been critically listening to any other narrator. “I will say for Peter, that after your mother was born, gals, he really seemed to warm up. I have seen him carrying your mother, when she was a little tot, all about these big halls and hummin’ to her like a bumblebee.
“But even at that, he influenced his father so that only a small legacy came to your mother when the old man died. Peter got most of the property into his hands before that happened, anyway. And quite right, too, I s’pose, for by that time he had increased the estate a whole lot by his own industry and foresight.
“Well, now! I have got to runnin’ away with my story, ain’t I? It was about Sally and that day she and Peter had their big quarrel. Whenever Peter heard, or saw Sally giving herself airs, he’d put in an oar and take her down a peg, now I tell you!” said Miss Titus, mixing her metaphors most woefully.
“I’d been to Sally’s room—it was a small one tucked away back here in this ell, and that hurt her like pizen! We was goin’ down stairs to the front hall. Sally stops on the landing and points to the ceiling overhead, what used to be painted all over with flowers and fat cupids, and sech—done by a famous artist they used to say when the house was built years before, but gettin’ faded and chipped then.
“So Sally points to the ceilin’ an’ says she: