Anna Balmer Myers

“ On the top shelf of the cupboard was a silver lustre pitcher, a teapot of rose lustre, a huge willow platter with its quaint blue design, several pewter bowls, a plate with a crude peacock in bright colors--an array of antiques that would have awakened covetousness in the heart of a connoisseur. ”

“ Aunt Rebecca laughed. “Ach, I had dare to do that for we was promised then, engaged they say now.”
“You were goin’ to marry Martin Landis’s pop once?” The girl could not quite believe it.
“Yes. But he was poor and along came Jonas Miller and he was rich and I took him. But the money never done me no good. Mebbe abody shouldn’t say it, since he’s dead, but Jonas was stingy. He’d squeeze a dollar till the eagle’d holler. He made me pinch and save till I got so I didn’t feel right when I spent money. Now, since he’s gone, I don’t know how. I act so dumb it makes me mad at myself sometimes. ”

“ Many were the hours she spent in the hot sun of the tobacco fields, riding the planter in the early spring, later hoeing the rich black soil close to the little young plants, in midsummer finding and killing the big green tobacco worms and topping and suckering the plants so that added value might be given the broad, strong leaves. ”

“ The meeting was over and Aunt Rebecca stood ready to take them to her home.
The country roads were filled with carriages and automobiles; the occupants of the former nodded a cordial how-de-do, though most of them were strangers, but the riders in the motors sped past without a sign of friendliness.
“My goodness,” said Aunt Rebecca, “since them automobiles is so common abody don’t get many how-de-dos no more as you travel along the country roads. Used to be everybody’d speak to everybody else they’d meet on the road--here, Amos,” she laid a restraining hand upon the reins. “Stop once! ”

“ As Amanda watched the stern, unlovely face during the critical, faultfinding conversation which followed, she thought to herself, “I just believe that Uncle Amos told the truth when he said that Aunt Rebecca’s like a chestnut burr. She’s all prickly on the outside but she’s got a nice, smooth side to her that abody don’t often get the chance to see. Mebbe now, if she’d married Martin Landis’s pop she’d be by now just as nice as Mrs. ”

“ The woman left the room. They heard her tramp about up-stairs and soon she returned with a long string of buttons threaded closely together and forming a heavy cable.
“Oh, let me see! Ain’t that nice!” exclaimed Amanda. “Where did you ever get so many buttons and all different?”
“We used to beg them. When I was a girl everybody mostly had a charm string. I kept puttin’ buttons on mine till I was well up in my twenties, then the string was full and big so I stopped. I used to hang it over the looking glass in the parlor and everybody that came looked at it.” ”