conversation, if anything wholly one-sided may be so termed.

"I live in the same place," she said. "Ma died seventeen years ago on
the eighteenth of next April, and left the house and the income for me.
There was enough to take care of two, and so I took my sister's child,
Araminta, to bring up. You know my poor sister got married. She ought
to have known better, but she didn't. She just put her head into the
noose, and it slipped up on her, as I told her it would, both before
and after the ceremony. Having seen all the trouble men make in the
world, I sh'd think women would know enough to keep away from 'em, but
they don't--that is, some women don't." Miss Hitty smoothed her stiff
white apron with an air of conscious virtue.

"Araminta was only a year old when her ma got enough of marrying and
went to her reward in Heaven. What she 'd been through would have
tried the patience of a saint, and Barbara wasn't no saint. None of
the Smith family have ever grown wings here on earth, but it's my
belief that we'll all be awarded our proper plumage in Heaven.

"He--" the pronoun was sufficiently definite to indicate Araminta's
hapless father--"was always tracking dirt into the clean kitchen, and
he had an appetite like a horse. Barbara would make a cake to set away
for company, and he'd gobble it all up at one meal just as if 't was a
doughnut. She was forever cooking and washing dishes and sweeping up
after him. When he come into the house, she'd run for the broom and
dustpan, and follow him around, sweeping up, and if you'll believe me,
the brute scolded her for it. He actually said once, in my presence,
that if he'd known how neat she was, he didn't believe he'd have
married her. That shows what men are--if it needs showing. It's no
wonder poor Barbara died. I hope there ain't any brooms in Heaven and