as if used to such work, and evidently liked to do it. I thanked her
for repairing damages so quickly and well, and she said, with my hat
on her hand, as if she hated to part with it, 'I'm used to
millineryin' and never should have give it up, if I didn't have my
folks to see to. I took this shop, hopin' to make things go, as such
a place was needed round here, but mother broke down, and is a sight
of care; so I couldn't leave her, and doctors is expensive, and
times hard, and I had to drop my trade, and fall back on pins and
needles, and so on.'"

Ella was a capital mimic, and imitated the nasal tones of the
Vermont woman to the life, with a doleful pucker of her own blooming
face, which gave such a truthful picture of poor Miss Almira Miller
that those who had seen her recognized it at once, and laughed
gayly.

"Just as I was murmuring a few words of regret at her bad luck,"
continued Ella, "a sharp voice called out from a back room, 'Almiry!
Almiry! come here.' It sounded very like a cross parrot, but it was
the old lady, and while I put on my hat I heard her asking who was
in the shop, and what we were 'gabbin' about.' Her daughter told
her, and the old soul demanded to 'see the gal;' so I went in, being
ready for fun as usual. It was a little, dark, dismal place, but as
neat as a pin, and in the bed sat a regular Grandma Smallweed
smoking a pipe, with a big cap, a snuff-box, and a red cotton
handkerchief. She was a tiny, dried-up thing, brown as a berry, with
eyes like black beads, a nose and chin that nearly met, and hands
like birds' claws. But such a fierce, lively, curious, blunt old
lady you never saw, and I didn't know what would be the end of me
when she began to question, then to scold, and finally to demand