Marching straight up to Carrie and extending her hand, Mrs. Nichols exclaimed, “Now I want to know if this is Car’line.  I’d no idee she was so big.  You pretty well, Car’line?”

Very haughtily Carrie touched the ends of her grandmother’s fingers, and with stately gravity replied that she was well.

Turning next to Anna, Mrs. Nichols continued, “And this is Anny.  Looks weakly ’pears to me, kind of blue around the eyes as though she was fitty.  Never have fits, do you, dear?”

“No, ma’am,” answered Anna, struggling hard to keep from laughing outright.

Here Mr. Livingstone inquired for his wife, and on being told that she was sick, started for her room.

“Sick?  Is your marm sick?” asked Mrs. Nichols of John Jr.  “Wall, I guess I’ll go right in and sea if I can’t do somethin’ for her.  I’m tolerable good at nussin’.”

Following her son, who did not observe her, she entered unannounced into the presence of her elegant daughter-in-law, who, with a little shriek, covered her head with the bed-clothes.  Knowing that she meant well, and never dreaming that she was intruding, Mrs. Nichols walked up to the bedside, saying, “How de do, ’Tilda?  I suppose you know I’m your mother—­come all the way from Massachusetts to live with you.  What is the matter?  Do you take anything for your sickness?”

A groan was Mrs. Livingstone’s only answer.

“Little hystericky, I guess,” suggested Mrs. Nichols, adding that “settin’ her feet in middlin’ hot water is good for that.”

“She is nervous, and the sight of strangers makes her worse.  So I reckon you’d better go out for the present,” said Mr. Livingstone, who really pitied his wife.  Then calling Corinda, he bade her show his mother to her room.

Corinda obeyed, and Mrs. Nichols followed her, asking her on the way “what her surname was, how old she was, if she knew how to read, and if she hadn’t a good deal rather be free than to be a slave!” to which Corinda replied, that “she didn’t know what a surname meant, that she didn’t know how old she was, that she didn’t know how to read, and that she didn’t know whether she’d like to be free or not, but reckoned she shouldn’t.”

“A half-witted gal that,” thought Mrs. Nichols, “and I guess ’Tilda don’t set much store by her.”  Then dropping into the wooden rocking-chair and laying aside her bonnet, she for the first time noticed that ’Lena was not with her, and asked Corinda to go for her.

Corinda complied, leaving the room just in time to stifle a laugh, as she saw Mrs. Nichols stoop down to examine the hearth-rug, wondering “how much it cost when ’twas new.”

We left ’Lena standing on the steps of the piazza.