"Well, it went on for fifteen year, an' then 'Mandy Knowles, Josh's
second cousin, come to help 'em with the work. 'Mandy was a queer
creatur'. I've studied a good deal over her, an' I dunno's I've quite
got to the bottom of her yit. She was one o' them sort o' slow women,
with a fat face, an' she hadn't got over dressin' young, though Lyddy
an' the rest of us that was over thirty was wearin' caps an' talkin'
about false fronts. But she never'd had no beaux; an' when Josh begun
to praise her an' say how nice 'twas to have her there, it tickled her
e'en a'most to death. She'd lived alone with her mother an' two
old-maid aunts, an' she didn't know nothin' about men-folks; I al'ays
thought she felt they was different somehow,--kind o' cherubim an'
seraphim,--an' you'd got to mind 'em as if you was the Childern of
Isr'el an' they was Moses. Josh never meant a mite o' harm, I'll say
that for him. He was jest man-like, that's all. There's lots o'
different kinds,--here, Mis' Niles, you know; you've buried your
third,--an' Josh was the kind that can't see more'n, one woman to a
time. He looked at 'Mandy, an' he got over seein' Lyddy Ann, that's
all. Things would ha' come out all right--as right as they be for most
married folks--if Lyddy Ann hadn't been so high-sperited; but she set
the world by Joshuay, an' there 'twas. 'Ain't it nice to have her
here?' he kep' on sayin' over'n' over to Lyddy, an' she'd say 'Yes;'
but byme-by, when she found he was al'ays on hand to bring a pail o'
water for 'Mandy, or to throw away her suds, or even help hang out the
clo'es--I see 'em hangin' out clo'es one day when I was goin' across
their lot huckleberr'in', an' he did look like a great gump, an' so did
she--well, then, Lyddy Ann got to seemin' kind o' worried, an' she had
more sick headaches than ever. Twa'n't a year afore that, I'd been in
one day when she had a headache, an' he says, as if he was perfessin'
his faith in meetin', 'By gum! I wish I could have them headaches for
her!' an' I thought o' speakin' of it, about now, when I run in to