“The mothers, Chrissy!” mildly prompted the whisper, when the narrator paused.

“Yes, the mothers! one died of a broken heart, and the other lost her mind outright.  She is living yet, an old woman, who regularly goes to the front door of the asylum every morning and takes her seat.  If it is cold weather, she sits inside.  She asks every one who enters if Luther is coming—­that was her boy’s name.”

“Did you know the first Mrs. John Hunt, Miss Chrissy—­my husband’s grandmother?” I asked, willing to change the gloomy subject.

“Just as well as I know you, Mrs. John.  She was a beautiful little woman, I was very young at the time I am thinking of.  She sent at night for an embroidered flannel I was doing.  It was my first wide pattern, and it went slow.  At 10 o’clock it was finished, and my father went with me to take it home.  They were all going to Washington to the President’s ball—­President Monroe, it was—­and the trunk was packing.  It was to go on the big traveling-coach.  When I ran up stairs and knocked,—­I had often been there before—­she opened the door herself.  ’Oh, it’s you Chrissy,’ she said in her pleasant way; ’come in child; don’t you want to see something pretty?’ And she showed me two elegant brocaded silk gowns, very narrow and very short-waisted, but stiff enough to stand alone.’

“She praised my work and said I was a good girl.  Then she paid me the money and tied a little blue silk handkerchief around my neck for a keepsake.  ‘There,’ she said, in her quick voice, ‘you may go.’  I did many other patterns for the family, but poor lady! she never saw me again.  She had an illness and lost her eyesight.  She was stone blind for many years.  I have the keepsake yet.  It is put away in the hair-trunk.”

The sisters were all in full sympathy, as usual.  Thus I sat and listened scores of times, making a pretence of wanting a pattern,—­anything to get Miss Chrissy story-telling.

In the centennial year I found “The Pears” much shaken from their even tenor.  The relic-hunters had penetrated their omnium gatherum and offered fabulous sums for the quaint old bits they found there.  One of them declared he must and would have these wonders for the New England Kitchen.  But the sisters were outraged.  Adroitly I managed to hint a desire to see those treasures inestimable, and then for the first time I moved from my accustomed seat, and they moved from theirs.  The magnitude of their wrongs would admit of nothing like routine or monotony.  The chairs were pushed back, and I saw five tall, slim figures standing erect, in straight black gowns, white kerchiefs and spotless caps.  They were devout Lutherans, and their pew at the Sunday service was never vacant; but I had never seen them outside the workshop.