“But why don’t you like her, Tira?” asked Helen.

“My dear, I’ll tell you,” said Statira; “for I don’t want you to think I’m set against any person unreasonable and without cause.  You see Miss Jaynes is a nateral-born beggar.  I don’t say it with any ill-will, but it’s a fact.  She takes to beggin’ as naterally as a goslin’ takes to a puddle; and when she first come to town she commenced a-beggin’, and has kep’ it up ever since.  She used to tackle me the same as she does everybody else, askin’ me to give somethin’ to this, and to that, and to t’other pet humbug of her’n, but I never would do it; and when she found she could’nt worry me into it, like the rest of ’em, it set her very bitter against me; and I heard of her tellin’ I’d treated her with rudeness, which I’d always treated her civilly, only when I said ‘No,’ she found coaxin’ and palaverin’ wouldn’t stir me.  So it went on for a year or two, till, one fall, I was stayin’ here to your ma’s,—­Cornele, I guess you remember the time,—­helpin’ of her make up her quinces and apples.  We was jest in the midst of bilin’ cider, with one biler on the stove and the biggest brass kittle full in the fireplace, when in comes boltin’ Miss Jaynes, dressed up as fine as a fiddle.  She set right down in the kitchen, and your ma rolled her sleeves down and took off her apurn, lookin’ kind o’ het and worried.  After a few words, Miss Jaynes took a paper out of her pocket, and says she to your ma, ‘Miss Bugbee,’ says she, ’I’m a just startin’ forth on the Lord’s business, and I come to you as the helpmate and pardner of one of his richest stewards in this vineyard.’—­’What is it now?’ says your ma, lookin’ out of one eye at the brass kittle, and speakin’ more impatient than I ever heard her speak to a minister’s wife before.  Well, I can’t spend time to tell all that Miss Jaynes said in answer, but it seemed some of the big folks in New York had started a new society, and its object was to provide, as near as ever I could find out, such kind of necessary notions for indigent young men studyin’ to be ministers as they couldn’t well afford to buy for themselves,—­such as steel-bowed specs for the near-sighted ones, and white cravats, black silk gloves, and linen-cambric handkerchiefs for ’em all,—­in order, as Miss Jaynes said, these young fellers might keep up a respectable appearance, and not give a chance for the world’s people to get a contemptible idee of the ministry, on account of the shabby looks of the young men that had laid out to foller that holy callin’.  She said it was a cause that ought to lay near the heart of every evangelical Christian man, and especially the women.  ‘We mothers in Israel,’ says Miss Jaynes, ’ought to feel for these young Davids that have gone forth to give battle to the Goliaths of sin that are a-stalkin’ and struttin’ round all over the land.’  She said the society was goin’ to be a great institution, with an office to New York, with an executive committee and three secretaries in attendance there,