I used to say, ’Miss Katharine, why don’t you have some young folks come and stop with you?  There’s Mis’ Lancaster’s daughter a growing up’; but she didn’t seem to care for nobody but your mother.  You wouldn’t believe what a hand she used to be for company in her younger days.  Surprisin’ how folks alters.  When I first rec’lect her much she was as straight as an arrow, and she used to go to Boston visiting and come home with the top of the fashion.  She always did dress elegant.  It used to be gay here, and she was always going down to the Lorimers’ or the Carews’ to tea, and they coming here.  Her sister was married; she was a good deal older; but some of her brothers were at home.  There was your grandfather and Mr. Henry.  I don’t think she ever got it over,—­his disappearing so.  There were lots of folks then that’s dead and gone, and they used to have their card-parties, and old Cap’n Manning—­he’s dead and gone—­used to have ’em all to play whist every fortnight, sometimes three or four tables, and they always had cake and wine handed round, or the cap’n made some punch, like’s not, with oranges in it, and lemons; he knew how!  He was a bachelor to the end of his days, the old cap’n was, but he used to entertain real handsome.  I rec’lect one night they was a playin’ after the wine was brought in, and he upset his glass all over Miss Martha Lorimer’s invisible-green watered silk, and spoilt the better part of two breadths.  She sent right over for me early the next morning to see if I knew of anything to take out the spots, but I didn’t, though I can take grease out o’ most any material.  We tried clear alcohol, and saleratus-water, and hartshorn, and pouring water through, and heating of it, and when we got through it was worse than when we started.  She felt dreadful bad about it, and at last she says, ’Judith, we won’t work over it any more, but if you ’ll give me a day some time or ’nother, we’ll rip it up and make a quilt of it.’  I see that quilt last time I was in Miss Rebecca’s north chamber.  Miss Martha was her aunt; you never saw her; she was dead and gone before your day.  It was a silk old Cap’n Peter Lorimer, her brother, who left ’em his money, brought home from sea, and she had worn it for best and second best eleven year.  It looked as good as new, and she never would have ripped it up if she could have matched it.  I said it seemed to be a shame, but it was a curi’s figure.  Cap’n Manning fetched her one to pay for it the next time he went to Boston.  She didn’t want to take it, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer; he was free-handed, the cap’n was.  I helped ’em make it ’long of Mary Ann Simms the dressmaker,—­she’s dead and gone too,—­the time it was made.  It was brown, and a beautiful-looking piece, but it wore shiny, and she made a double-gown of it before she died.”