"Why, Aunt Sally! you are telling the biggest kind of a one this minute," cried her niece.
A good-natured warfare waged continually between these two. Mrs. Leigh, who was in reality the most petted and indulged of old ladies, pretending to live in constant fear of Miss Sarah.
"But what can we do?" Alexina was heard asking, as the skirmishers finally retired, Mrs. Leigh having the last word. "We can't exactly blame these persons, whoever they may be, for coming here. They could not know we did not want them."
"I saw some one standing in the door of the shop this morning who looked like a lady," Miss Virginia remarked.
"How do you define a lady, Virginia?" her sister asked with some severity.
"Why, Caroline, I am not a dictionary; I wish you wouldn't ask me to define things," replied Miss Virginia, with a little laugh. Then with the manner of one who regretted this flippancy she added, "I think I understand the word as you do."
"It seems to me we are too often content with a surface meaning," Mrs. Millard continued.
"That is true," agreed Alex. "Now, there is no reason in the world why these shopkeepers may not be ladies."
Mrs. Millard looked at her doubtfully. "Still," she interposed, "ladies do not as a usual thing keep shops."
"No; they sweep and scrub and cook, and pretend they don't,—that is the difference," put in Miss Sarah, crossing her knees and bending forward with the air of one who had found a congenial theme. "I am a paper-hanger, a painter, and a maid-of-all-work; and this is what it usually means to be a lady when you are poor."