good as ever, she insisted; and even if it were not, she could put on
one that had not seen so much actual service. It was Andy who finally
decided her to indulge in the extravagance urged by Melinda Jones. There
were reasons why Andy was very near to his mother's heart, and when he
offered to sell his brown pony, which he loved as he did his eyes, his
mother yielded the point, and taking with her both Mrs. Jones and
Melinda, went to Camden, and sat two mortal hours upon rolls of
carpeting while she decided which to take.

Mrs. Markham was not stingy with regard to her table; that was always
loaded with the choicest of everything, while many a poor family blessed
her as an angel. But the articles she ate were mostly the products of
their large, well-cultivated farm; they did not cost money directly out
of her hand, and it was the money she disliked parting with, so she
talked and dickered, and beat the Camden merchant down five cents on a
yard, and made him cut it a little short, to save a waste, and made him
throw in the thread and binding and swear when she was gone, wondering
who "the stingy old woman was." And yet the very day after her return
from Camden "the stingy old woman" had sent to her minister a loaf of
bread and a pail of butter, and to a poor sick woman, who lived in a
leaky cabin off in the prairie, a nice, warm blanket for her bed, with a
basket of delicacies to tempt her capricious appetite.

In due time the carpet had been made, Melinda Jones sewing up three of
the seams, while Andy, who knew how to use the needle almost as well as
a girl, claimed the privilege of sewing at least half a seam on the new
sister's carpet. Adjoining Richard's chamber was a little room where
Mrs. Markham's flour and meal and corn were kept, but which, with a
little fitting up, would answer nicely for a bedroom, and after an
amount of engineering, which would have done credit to the general of an