come to a turnin'-p'int. I s'pose they'd got to, some time, an' it
might jest as well ha' been fust as last. Lyddy Ann was pretty
miserable, an' she'd been dosin' with thoroughwort an' what all when
anybody told her to; but I al'ays thought she never cared a mite
whether she lived to see another spring. The day I'm comin' to, she was
standin' over the fire fryin' fish, an' 'Mandy was sort o' fiddlin'
round, settin' the table, an' not doin' much of anything arter all. I
dunno how she come to be so aggravatin', for she was al'ays ready to do
her part, if she _had_ come between husband an' wife. You know how hard
it is to git a fish dinner! Well, Lyddy Ann was tired enough, anyway.
An' when Josh come in, 'Mandy she took a cinnamon-rose out of her
dress, an' offered it to him.

"'Here's a flower for your button-hole,' says she, as if she wa'n't
more 'n sixteen. An' then she set down in a chair, an' fanned herself
with a newspaper.

"Now that chair happened to be Lyddy Ann's at the table, an' she see
what was bein' done. She turned right round, with the fish-platter in
her hand, an' says she, in an awful kind of a voice,--

"'You git up out o' my chair! You've took my husband away, but you
sha'n't take my place at the table!'

"The hired man was there, washin' his hands at the sink, an' he told it
to me jest as it happened. Well, I guess they all thought they was
struck by lightnin', an' Lyddy Ann most of all. Josh he come to, fust.
He walked over to Lyddy Ann.

"'You put down that platter!' says he. An' she begun to tremble, an'