at Uncle Tony like so many Judases and all commenced talking at once.
But Mrs. Dustin didn't give them much chance. She just took up all
Uncle Tony's attention and time. She bought and bought, being real
careful of course to ask only for the things she knew he had; and to
top it all she bought four quarts of robin's-egg blue paint. You know
that's Uncle Tony's favor-ite woodwork paint and nobody goes in there
for paint but what he's trying to get them to buy robin's-egg blue.
Seems his mother's kitchen on the old farm was done that way and Uncle
Tony's never been able to see any other color.

"Well, I thought those four cans of paint was about the highest kind of
good luck but when Mrs. Dustin give her message I nearly fell dead, and
as for them old he-gossips they were about paralyzed, I guess. Why
even you, Grandma, couldn't hardly guess what that message was;" here
Fanny pulled up a sagging stocking and hurried on lest she should be
interrupted.

"It was nothing more nor less than that Bernard Rollins, the artist,
wants to paint Uncle Tony's portraiture. 'And, of course, Tony,' said
Mrs. Dustin in that sweet way of hers, 'you won't refuse, will you?'
And I declare the lovely way she looked at him and he at her I come
near believing Sadie might be right by accident. But, land--in this
town everybody has growed up with everybody else and somebody is always
saying that somebody is sweet on somebody else or was when he or she
were young.

"So there's that portraiture to look forward to. And now there's that
yarn that some careless busybody started about Nanny Turner being left
a fortune of eighteen thousand dollars. Everybody's been crazy,
praising her luck to her face and envying her behind her back.