"'Well, my dear, what then?'"
"'And a carpet spun and woven at home would be quite as comfortable, though not as handsome, as one brought from New York.'"
"'And not as expensive,' remarked my uncle; 'but you need not deny yourself on that account.'"
"'I was not considering the expense,' replied my aunt. 'What I thought was this: that by having my carpet spun and woven at home I could give employment and a means of subsistence to some of the poor women about us, whose families, I fear, will have hard work to get through the winter with any degree of comfort.'"
"'I thought there was some such idea at the bottom of the matter,' said my uncle, smiling in his turn. 'But please yourself, my dear. For my own part, I shall be as well satisfied with the homespun carpet as with the handsomest one over imported; and I fully agree with you as to the desirableness of finding employment for our poor neighbors. But how will you manage the matter?'"
"'I shall call them together and give out the wool,' replied Madam Dean. 'They can take it to their own homes, and spin and double and twist it, and when they bring it home, I can pay them either in money or anything else they may happen to want.'"
"Mr. Dean agreed with his wife that the plan was an excellent one, and, some days after his departure for New York, she proceeded to put it into execution. She prepared her stores of wool, and, calling her neighbors together, she explained to them that she wanted it spun, requesting each woman to take home such an amount of the wool as she thought she could manufacture within the appointed time."
"'What in the world are you going to do with so much yarn, madam Dean?' asked Bethiah Coffin, who had three little children, and a husband bed-ridden with rheumatism. 'I shouldn't think you could ever use it in your own family!'"
"It is not for cloth, but for a carpet,' explained my aunt. 'I am going to have a carpet made for the floor of my new parlor, which, you see, is quite large. I do not think there will be too much wool for the purpose.'"
"'A carpet! You don't say so!' said old Mrs. Davis. 'I haven't seen a carpeted floor since I came to York State. Old Madam Childs, in Pittsfield, where I came from, had carpets on her best rooms, but they were boughten ones, brought from England before the war.'"