right long 'side on us, for years an' years, thet he'd never any more 'n
jest pass the time o' day with, 'n' he wa'n't a bit stuck up, either. I
used ter ask him, often 'n' often, what made him so offish to sum folks,
when I knew he hadn't the least thing agin 'em; and he allers said, sez
he, 'Well, I can't tell ye nothin' about it, only jest this is the way 't
is: I can't talk to 'em; they sort o' shet me up, like. I don't feel
nateral, somehow, when they're round!'"

"O mother!" exclaimed Mercy, "I think I must be just like father. That is
exactly the way I feel so often. When I get with some people, I feel just
as if I had been changed into somebody else. I can't bear to open my
mouth. It is like a bad dream, when you dream you can't move hand nor
foot, all the time they're in the room with me."

"Well, I thank the Lord, I don't never take such notions about people,"
said Mrs. Carr, settling herself back in her chair, and beginning to make
her needles fly. "Nobody don't never trouble me much, one way or the
other. For my part, I think folks is alike as peas. We shouldn't hardly
know 'em apart, if 't wa'n't for their faces."

Mercy was about to reply, "Why, mother, you just said that I was queer;
and this old man was queer; and my father must have been queer, too." But
she glanced at the placid old face, and forbore. There was a truth as well
as an untruth in the inconsistent sayings, and both lay too deep for the
childish intellect to grasp.

Mercy was impatient to go at once to see their new home; but she could not
induce her mother to leave the house.

"O Mercy!" she exclaimed pathetically, "ef yer knew what a comfort 't was