The conversation was here interrupted by the civilities attendant on the reception of Mrs. Jones,—­a broad, buxom, hearty soul, who had come on horseback from a farm about three miles distant.

Smiling with rosy content, she presented Mrs. Katy a small pot of golden butter,—­the result of her forenoon’s churning.

There are some people so evidently broadly and heartily of this world, that their coming into a room always materializes the conversation.  We wish to be understood that we mean no disparaging reflection on such persons;—­they are as necessary to make up a world as cabbages to make up a garden; the great healthy principles of cheerfulness and animal life seem to exist in them in the gross; they are wedges and ingots of solid, contented vitality.  Certain kinds of virtues and Christian graces thrive in such people as the first crop of corn does in the bottom-lands of the Ohio.  Mrs. Jones was a church-member, a regular church-goer, and planted her comely person plump in front of Dr. H. every Sunday, and listened to his searching and discriminating sermons with broad, honest smiles of satisfaction.  Those keen distinctions as to motives, those awful warnings and urgent expostulations, which made poor Deacon Twitchel weep, she listened to with great, round, satisfied eyes, making to all, and after all, the same remark,—­that it was good, and she liked it, and the Doctor was a good man; and on the present occasion, she announced her pot of butter as one fruit of her reflections after the last discourse.

“You see,” she said, “as I was a-settin’ in the spring-house, this mornin’, a-workin’ my butter, I says to Dinah,—­’I’m goin’ to carry a pot of this down to Miss Scudder for the Doctor,—­I got so much good out of his Sunday’s sermon.  And Dinah she says to me, says she,—­’Laws, Miss Jones.  I thought you was asleep, for sartin!’ But I wasn’t; only I forgot to take any caraway-seed in the mornin’, and so I kinder missed it; you know it ’livens one up.  But I never lost myself so but what I kinder heerd him goin’ on, on, sort o’ like,—­and it sounded all sort o’ good; and so I thought of the Doctor to-day.”

“Well, I’m sure,” said Aunt Katy, “this will be a treat; we all know about your butter, Mrs. Jones.  I sha’n’t think of putting any of mine on table to-night, I’m sure.”

“Law, now don’t!” said Mrs. Jones.  “Why, you re’lly make me ashamed, Miss Scudder.  To be sure, folks does like our butter, and it always fetches a pretty good price,—­he’s very proud on’t.  I tell him he oughtn’t to be,—­we oughtn’t to be proud of anything.”

And now Mrs. Katy, giving a look at the old clock, told Mary it was time to set the tea-table; and forthwith there was a gentle movement of expectancy.  The little mahogany tea-table opened its brown wings, and from a drawer came forth the snowy damask covering.  It was etiquette, on such occasions, to compliment every article of the establishment successively, as it appeared; so the Deacon’s wife began at the table-cloth.