"Welcome home, child," says Mis' Merriman, and wiped her eyes! Mis' Merriman is human, but tactless.
"Welcome home, you poor thing," says Mis' Sykes, and she sniffed. Everything Mis' Sykes does she ought to have picked out to do the way she didn't.
But Letty, she took it serene enough. While we were getting her trunk, Mis' Sykes whispered to me:
"Are you sure she's the right niece? She ain't got on a stitch of mourning."
Sure enough, she hadn't. She wore a little blue dress.
"Like enough she couldn't afford it," says Mis' Merriman. And we thought that must be it.
They were both to stay for supper, and they'd each brought a little present for my niece. When she opened them, one was a black-edged handkerchief and the other was a package of mixed flower-seeds to plant next spring in her cemetery lot. Mis' Sykes and Mis' Merriman were both ready to cry all the while she untied them. But Letty smiled, serene, and thanked them, serene too, and put a pink aster from the table in her dress, and said, couldn't we go out and look at my flowers? And we went, Mis' Sykes and Mis' Merriman folding up their handkerchiefs and exchanging surprised eyebrows.
At the back door we came, plain in the face, on George Fred, whittling up my shavings.
"Two baskets of shavings, Miss Marsh, or one?"