"Ah! she generally comes to borrow some little thing or other. They're the sort of folks that always have something they're out of. Mrs. Sixpence is a very odd sixpence indeed."
"I think the little girl said her last name was Schilling."
"Ah, yes, so it is: but I'm always forgetting their exact commercial value," and Aunt Wealthy laughed softly. "In fact, I've a very good forgetting of my own, and am more apt to get names wrong than right."
"Mrs. Schilling must have an odd taste for names," said Elsie.
"Yes, she's a manufacturer of them; and very proud of her success in that line."
Miss Stanhope was a great lover of flowers, very proud of hers, cultivated principally by her own hands. After tea she invited her nephew and niece to a stroll through her garden, while she exhibited her pets with a very excusable pride in their variety, beauty, and fragrance.
As they passed into the house again, Phillis was feeding the chickens in the back yard.
"You have quite a flock of poultry, aunt," remarked Mr. Dinsmore.
"Yes, I like to see them running about, and the eggs you lay yourself are so much better than any you can buy, and the chickens, too, have quite another taste. Phillis, what's the matter with that speckled hen?"
"Dunno, mistis; she's been crippled dat way all dis week."