She is a tall, “spindlin’ lookin’” women, light complected, sandy-haired, and with big, light blue eyes. I hadn’t see her for nineteen yeers, but she seemed dredful tickled to see me, and says she:
“You look younger, Samantha, than you did the first time I ever seen you.”
“Oh, no!” says I, “that can’t be, Alzina Ann, for that is in the neighborhood of thirty years ago.”
Says she, “It is true as I live and breathe; you look younger and handsomer than I ever see you look.”
I didn’t believe it, but I thought it wouldn’t look well to dispute her any more, so I let it go; and mebby she thought she had convinced me that I did look younger than I did, when I was eighteen or twenty. But I only said, “That I didn’t feel so young anyway. I had spells of feelin’ mauzer.”
She took off her things, she was dressed up awful slick, and Josiah helped bring in her trunk. And I told her just how mortified I wus about Josiah’s forgettin’ her letter, and her ketchin’ me unprepared. But, good Lord! she told me that she never in her hull life see a house in the order mine wus, never, and she had seen thousands and thousands of different houses.
Says I, “I feel worked up, and almost mortified, about my settin’-room carpet bein’ up.”
But she held up both hands (they wus white as snow, and all covered with rings). And says she, “If there is one thing that I love to see, Samantha, more than another, it is to see a settin’-room carpet up, it gives such a sort of a free, noble look to a room.”
Says I, “The curtains are down in the spare bed-room, and I am almost entirely out of cookin’.”