"Mustn't we?" says Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, wiping her eyes.
"Must we not?" says Mis' Silas Sykes—that would correct your grammar if the house was on fire.
My niece's daughter Letty had lost her father and her mother within a year, and she was coming to spend the summer with me.
"She's going to pick out the style monument she wants here in town," I says, "and maybe buy it."
"Poor thing! That'll give her something to put her mind on," says Mis' Sykes.
George Fred come in just then to fill my wood-box—his father was bound he should be named George and his mother hung out for Fred, so he got both onto him permanent. He was going to business college, and choring it for near the whole town. He used to swallow his supper and rush like mad from wood-box to cow all over the village. Nights when I heard a noise, I never thought it was a burglar any more. I turned over again and thought: "That's George Fred cutting somebody's grass." I never see a man more bent on getting himself educated.
"George Fred," I says, "my grandniece Letty is coming to live with me. She's lost her folks. I thought we'd kind of try to be good to her."
"Trust me," says George Fred. "My cousin Jed, he lost his folks too. I can tell her about him."
The next day Letty came. I hadn't seen her for years. My land! when she got off the train, I never saw plainer. She was a nice little thing, but plain eyes, plain nose, plain mouth, and her hair—that was less than plain. But she was so smiling and so gentle that the plain part never bothered me a minute.
"Letty," says I, "welcome home." Mis' Merriman and Mis' Sykes had gone to the depot with me.