"How beautiful! I wish I had one like it."
"Ah, that is not to sell; it is family what you call it?"
"Heirloom," suggested Priscilla.
"But yes, that is so, for my grandmère had it long ago. She was daughter to an exile."
Amy handled the pitcher carefully as she set it back on the shelf. Few of the other dishes were china, though one delicate cup and saucer Amy pronounced older even than the pitcher.
When Priscilla complimented the two women on their English, they beamed with pride, and explained that they had made a great effort to learn it while living in Yarmouth, where the older woman's husband had worked in a mill.
"But we see not many English, so we have not much chance to practise. That how the sister send you here."
"As a language-lesson," murmured Amy; and even Priscilla smiled in spite of herself.
The younger woman was talkative. She took them into her neat bedroom, with its floor in two colors,—a yellow geometrical design painted on a brown ground,—and showed them with especial pride her dressing-table, the frame of which she had fashioned with her own hands and draped with white muslin. From the window she pointed out her little garden, with its vegetable patch and tiny strawberry-bed, which she worked herself.
"I sell some every year," she said. "That helps keep house. We don't need much, we Acadians; we very lazy."