"It was so!" said Mr. Sam.
"Certin!" said Mr. Sim.
"I thought so!" said Calvin. "Miss Hands, you ought to have this cup by rights; and yet I'm pleased to have it, for I thought a sight of the boys' Ma, and she knowed it. She was always good to me, if she did call me a rover; always good to me she was, from the time I was knee high to a grasshopper. The boys was bigger than me in those days, Miss Hands; I dono as you'd think it now, but so it was. They stopped growin' at the same time; didn't you, boys? Along about fourteen year old, warn't it? You've been just the same height since then, haven't ye?"
"I'm a mite the tallest!" said Mr. Sam, raising his head.
"Tell him it ain't so!" piped Mr. Sim. "Tell him I am!"
"Sho!" said Calvin Parks. "I don't believe either one of you has the least idee, reelly. If there was any difference, I should say Sim was just a shade the tallest; how does it look it to you, Miss Hands?"
"I think Cousin Sam is!" replied Mary Sands promptly.
"You don't say!" said Calvin. "Now that's queer! Looks to me—well! I say, let's find out! 'Tis easy done. Come on into the front room, boys, and stand back to back, and I'll measure ye!"
The front room was open in honor of Christmas Day; "Ma's" best parlor, with its cross-stitch embroideries, its mourning pictures, its rigid black horse-hair chairs and sofas. Above the mantelpiece, with its tall vases of waving pampas grass, "Ma" herself gazed down from a portentous gold frame with a quelling glance; "Pa" hung beside her, a meek young man with a feeble smile of apology; one could understand that he had backed out of existence as soon as might be. In one corner stood a tall dim mirror, and before it a little double chair of quaint shape, evidently made for two children.
"Sho!" said Calvin Parks. "How did that chair come here? Why, I haven't seen that for forty year. Jerusalem! that takes me back—why, Sim and Sam, it seems only yesterday, the first time ever I set foot in this room, and there sat you two in that little chair gogglin' at me, and your Ma standin' beside you. Say, boys, that kind of takes holt of me! your Ma was a good woman, if she did know her own mind. Well, we're all poor creatur's. Here! you stand back to back in front of the glass, and then I can see—hold your chins up—shoulders back; shoulders back, Sim! don't scrooch down that way; you ain't really a crab, you know—head up, Sam! there! now shut your eyes; any one can stand straighter with their eyes shut; now,—"