"And, sure enough, the next time we see the party, ten to one, somebody else has helped them out, and there's no need of our mixing in at all. No, nobody can say I want to push myself. I always tell Mr. Peckett I ain't a mite curious, but I confess I am terribly interested, which is altogether different, and what the Bible tells us to be."
"Well, well! Now, what do you think o' that!" said Martha. "I wouldn'ta known the difference."
Mrs. Peckett paused, as if to weigh her words. "I tell you what I'll do," she announced with the air of fully appreciating the measure of her kindness, and wanting Mrs. Slawson to appreciate it, too, "I'll take you in hand. Whenever you want to know anything, all you have to do is come to me, and I'll tell you. I'll consider it a pleasure. I can see where there's a lot for you to learn. The city is a poor place to be brought up and live in, all your life, with its vice, and its selfishness, and the like of that. But, now you've come here, you'll see something different. Why, you'll feel made over, when you've learned our honest, generous country ways."
Seeing Mrs. Peckett rise cumbersomely, in preparation for departure, Martha also got upon her feet.
"Well, I declare," she ejaculated blandly, "just before you come in, I was tellin' my husband the time had come when I'd got to do somethin' or other, so's I wouldn't be so old-style, an' shame my fam'ly. An' here you are, offerin' to improve me, free grates for nothin', as Miss Claire, bless her! says. It's like Providence's finger in the pie, an' no mistake. But I'm afraid I'll be puttin' you out too much. They say, it's hard to learn an old dog new tricks."
Mrs. Peckett was a fleshy woman; all her movements had a certain air of unctuousness. She shook her head, with reassuring, easy patronage.
"Not at all," she said, "I'll admire to——"
The door banged open, interrupting her unceremoniously, and the Slawson son and heir, Sammy junior, heated and perspiring, breathless but communicative, burst noisily into the room.
"My, my!" ejaculated Martha. "I guess you think you're a en*gine*, don't you? Pantin' like that, 's if you was luggin' a train o' cars behind you? Hats off to ladies. Don't you see Mrs. Peckett? Say how de do, like a gen'lman."
Sammy bobbed an awkward pate. "Say, mother-r-r," he stammered.