Because I always use my shoe.’
Then when you was through you explained to me that your ma didn’t really whip you. You just had to put in that part about the shoe to make it rhyme, you said. You was an awful old-fashioned child, Barbara!”
“My poetry was of about the same quality then that it is now,” laughed Barbara. “I’ll take the bread and the cakes with me, Miss Pettibone. This is like old Auburn days. I haven’t carried a loaf of bread on the street since I left home.”
“Well, paper bundles with the steam rising from them ain’t very swell, but sometimes the insides makes it worth while,” said the little baker. “Come in and see me often, Barbara, when it ain’t an errand. And give my love to your mother. She hasn’t been looking well lately, seems to me.”
Barbara smiled her good-by, and the little bell jingled merrily as the door swung shut.
“It’s always good to see Miss Pettibone,” she said to herself as she started up the quiet street. “She belongs in a story-book,—a little felt one with cheery red covers. It is queer about her, too. She is as provincial as any one in Auburn, and yet she is never commonplace.”
At the corner she encountered another of the characters of Auburn. This was Mrs. Kotferschmidt, the old German woman, whose husband had been for years the proprietor of the one boat-livery of the town. He had died during the past winter, and Barbara, meeting the widow, stopped to offer her condolences. The old boatman had taught her to swim and to row, and her expressions of sympathy were genuine.
“Mother wrote me about your loss,” she said. “I was so sorry to hear about Mr. Kotferschmidt.”
The old lady rustled in her crape, but the stolid face in the black bonnet showed no sign of emotion.
“Oh, you don’t need to mind that,” she said politely. “He was getting old, anyways. In the spring I hired me a stronger man to help me mit the boats.”