so long-lived as they used to be.

Aunt Hitty thought Lyddy a Goth and a Vandal because she took down
the twenty silver coffin-plates and laid them reverently away. "Mis'
Butterfield would turn in her grave," she said, "if she could see her
niece. She ain't much of a housekeeper, I guess," she went on, as
she cut over Dr. Berry's old trousers into briefer ones for Tommy
Berry. "She gives considerable stuff to her hens that she'd a sight
better heat over and eat herself, in these hard times, when the
missionary societies can't hardly keep the heathen fed and clothed
and warmed--no, I don't mean warmed, for most o' the heathens live in
hot climates, somehow or 'nother. My back door's jest opposite hers;
it's across the river, to be sure, but it's the narrer part, and I
can see everything she does as plain as daylight. She washed a
Monday, and she ain't taken her clothes in yet, and it's Thursday.
She may be bleachin' of 'em out, but it looks slack. I said to Si
last night I should stand it till 'bout Friday--seein' 'em lay on the
grass there--but if she didn't take 'em in then, I should go over and
offer to help her. She has a fire in the settin'-room 'most every
night, though we ain't had a frost yet; and as near's I can make out,
she's got full red curtains hangin' up to her windows. I ain't sure,
for she don't open the blinds in that room till I get away in the
morning, and she shuts 'em before I get back at night. Si don't know
red from green, so he's useless in such matters. I'm going home late
to-night, and walk down on that side o' the river, so 't I can call
in after dark and see what makes her house light up as if the sun was
settin' inside of it."

As a matter of fact, Lyddy was revelling in house-furnishing of a
humble sort. She had a passion for colour. There was a red-and-