I'd had my supper and wuz restin' in my room, Molly and Blandina had gone for a walk accompanied by Billy Huff, and Josiah had gone down to set with grandpa Huff a spell, when Aunt Tryphena come in and said a lady wuz there to see me; I asked her who it wuz, and she said:
"I don't know, but guess it is some 'big bug trash,' 'tennyrate she come in a antymobile that stands to the door without hitchin'."
I knowed in a minute it wuz Jane Olive Perkins and told her to bring her up to my room. And she entered with more than her usual gushin' warmth of manner, and told me the first thing that I grew better and younger lookin' every year.
But I kinder waved the idee off and told her, I didn't feel so young as
I did twenty or thirty years ago.
I acted well. (But then I spoze I do look remarkable young for one of my years, and I admired her good horse sense in seein' it so plain.) But she looked real mauger, and I sez:
"You look kinder beat out, Jane Olive, hain't you well?"
Yes, she said she wuz well, but had so many cares that they wore on her.
"Why," sez I, "you don't try to do your housework alone, do you?"
No, she said she had ten servants.
So I knowed she didn't have to do the heaviest of her work, but her face looked dretful tired and disappinted and I knowed it wuz caused by her efforts to git into fashionable society, for I'd hearn more about it since I come here, Miss Huff knowed a woman that lived neighbor to her, she said that in spite of all Sam Perkinses money and Jane Olive's efforts she couldn't git so fur into the circle of the first as she wanted to, though she had done everything a woman could do.