"Have you a mother living?"

"O yes, and she is one of the best mothers, too, and I think you look like
her. There are four of us brothers. How much your little boy looks like my
little brother Willie at home! Come here," he said to Charlie, who had
opened the door to ask Aunt Stanshy a question, "come here and see what
apothecaries carry in their pockets. Some folks think they only carry
drugs and such things, but you see if it is so?" Here he put into
Charlie's fat hand a long and toothsome piece of checkerberry pipe stem!

"He is not my little boy really," explained Aunt Stanshy, and then she
went on to say who Charlie was, and also told about other things, finally
saying so much concerning the Macomber family that he ceased to be a
stranger and seemed to become a relative, a species of long-absent son,
and consistently what could Aunt Stanshy do but let Will Somers--an
arrival in Seamont only a few hours old--have that sacred apartment--her
front room?

"What a fool I am!" soliloquized Aunt Stanshy. She watched Will Somers go
down the street after the interview, and heard him whistling "The girl I
left behind me." Did he mean Aunt Stanshy? "I'm a nat'ral-born fool, I do
believe," she exclaimed, "letting a perfect stranger have that room; but
there, it will be sort of nice having him round. I s'pose he will want to
stick a lot of things into that room." And didn't he stick up "things" and
make changes? Down came the two yellow crockery crow-biddies that had
roosted on the mantelpiece the last twenty years, never having paid for
the privilege with a single crow. Down came two vases of dried grasses.
Down came a flaming red, yellow, orange, and green print of an American
farm-yard. Up went various things. Over the mantel-piece was suspended a
picture of Abraham Lincoln, garnished with American flags, and along the