Aunt Rachel's face, ineffably ignorant and ineffably sweet, lit up with
a smile of welcome. She met me in the doorway, kissed me.

And she made me a great batch of pancakes to eat, with bacon dripping
and New Orleans molasses ... but first--

"Josh, where on earth is them carpet slippers o' yourn?"

Josh yawned. He knocked the tobacco out of his pipe leisurely ... then,
silent, he began scraping the black, foul inside of the bowl ... then at
last he drawled.

"Don't know, Ma!"

But Phoebe knew, and soon, a mile too wide, the carpet slippers hung on
my feet, while my shoes were drying in the oven and sending out that
peculiar, close smell that wet leather emanates when subjected to heat.
Also, I put on Phoebe's pea-green cotton skirt, while my knee britches
hung behind the stove, drying. The men chaffed me.

* * * * *

In the industrial Middle West of those days, when the steel kings'
fortunes were in bloom of growth, these distantly related kinsfolk of
mine still lived the precarious life of pioneer days. Through the bare
boards of the uneven floor whistled the wind. Here and there lay a
sparse, grey, homemade rag rug. And here and there a window pane,
broken, had not been replaced. And an old pair of pants, a ragged shirt,
a worn out skirt stuffed in, kept out the draft,--of which everybody but
Phoebe seemed mortally afraid. Incidentally these window-stuffings kept