"What is that, Aunt Fortune?" said she, after she had watched her with a beating heart for about five minutes.
"What is what?"
"I mean, what is that you are straining through the colander into that jar?"
"Hop-water."
"What is it for?"
"I'm scalding this meal with it to make turnpikes."
"Turnpikes!" said Ellen "I thought turnpikes were high, smooth roads, with toll-gates every now and then that's what Mamma told me they were."
"That's all the kind of turnpikes your Mamma knew anything about, I reckon," said Miss Fortune, in a tone that conveyed the notion that Mrs. Montgomery's education had been very incomplete. "And indeed," she added, immediately after, "if she had made more turnpikes and paid fewer tolls, it would have been just as well, I'm thinking."
Ellen felt the tone, if she did not thoroughly understand the words. She was silent for a moment; then remembering her purpose, she began again
"What are these, then, aunt Fortune?"