the simplest, gentlest creature I ever see in my life. The girls are all
just crazy over her. No, she ain't told me yet anything about herself,
an' I don't like to press her none. Poor lamb, with her heart buried in
the grave, at her age! No, I don't know how long she means to stay,
neither, but 'twould be a good while, if I had my way."

To Mrs. Elliott, her best friend and Fred's mother, she was slightly more
communicative, though she disclosed no vital statistics.

"Edith helped her unpack an' she said she never even imagined anything
equal to what come out of them three great trunks; she said it made her
just long to be a widow. The dresses was all black, of course, but they
had an awful expensive look, some way, just the same. An' underclothes!
Edith said there was at least a dozen of everything, an' two dozen of
most, lace an' handwork an' silk, from one end of 'em to the other. She
has a leather box most as big as a suitcase heaped with jewelry--it was
open one morning when I went in with her breakfast, an' I give you my
word, Eliza, that just the little glimpse I got of it was worth walkin'
miles to see! An' yet she never wears so much as the simplest ring or
pin. She has enough flowers for an elegant funeral sent to her three
times a week by express, an' throws 'em away before they're
half-faded--says she likes the little wild ones that are beginnin' to
come up around here better, anyway. Yes, I don't deny she has some real
queer notions--for instance, she puts all them flowers in plain green
glass vases, an' wouldn't so much as look at the elegant cut-glass ones
they keep up to Wallacetown. She don't eat a particle of breakfast, an'
she streaks off for a long walk every day, rain or shine, an' wants the
old tin tub carried in so's she can have a hot bath every single night,
besides takin' what she calls a 'cold sponge' when she gets up in the
mornin'--which ain't till nearly noon."