over here.' An' when young Nat married, I says to myself, 'That'll make
him speak.' But it didn't--an' you 're a laughin'-stock, 'Mandy Green,
if ever there was one. Every time the neighbors see him steppin' by
Saturday nights, all fixed up, with that brown coat on he's had sence
the year one, they have suthin' to say, 'Goin' over to 'Mandy's,'
that's what they say. An' on'y last Saturday one on 'em hollered out to
me, when I was pickin' a mess o' pease for Sunday, 'Wonder what
'Mandy'll answer when he gits round to askin' of her?' I hadn't a word
to say. 'You better go to _him_,' says I, at last."

Amanda had put down her sewing in her lap, and was looking steadfastly
out of the window, with eyes brimmed by two angry tears. Once she wiped
them with a furtive movement of the white garment in her lap; her
cheeks were crimson. Aunt Melissa had lashed herself into a cumulative
passion of words.

"An' I says to myself, 'If there ain't nobody else to speak to 'Mandy,
I will,' I says, when I was combin' my hair this mornin'. 'She 'ain't
got no mother,' I says, 'nor as good as none, an' if she 'ain't spunk
enough to look out for herself, somebody's got to look out for her.'
An' then it all come over me--I'd speak to Kelup himself, an' bein'
Saturday night, I knew I should ketch him here."

"O Aunt Melissa!" gasped Amanda, "you wouldn't do that!"

"Yes, I would, too!" asserted Aunt Melissa, setting her firm lips. "You
see if I don't, an' afore another night goes over my head!"

But while Amanda was looking at her, paralyzed with the certainty that
no mortal aid could save her from this dire extremity, there came an