“Well, have him come, then,” said Sylvia.  Sylvia was nearly out of the yard when Charlotte called after her:  “Don’t you want me to come over and help you, Aunt Sylvia?” she called out.  She stood in the door with her apron flying out in the wind like a blue flag.

“No, I guess not,” replied Sylvia; “I don’t need any help.  I ain’t got much to do.”

“I think Aunt Sylvia looks sick,” Charlotte said to her mother when she went in.

“I thought she looked kind of peaked,” said Sarah.  But neither of them dreamed of the true state of affairs:  how poor Sylvia Crane, half-starved and half-frozen in heart and stomach, was on the verge of bankruptcy of all her little worldly possessions.

Sylvia’s sisters, practical enough in other respects, were singularly ignorant and incompetent concerning any property except the few dollars and cents in their own purses.

They had always supposed Sylvia had enough to live on, as long as she lived at all.  They had a comfortable sense of generosity and self-sacrifice, since they had let her have all the old homestead after her mother’s death without a word, and even against covert remonstrances on the parts of their husbands.

Silas Berry had once said out quite openly to his wife and Sarah Barnard:  “That will had ought to be broke, accordin’ to my way of thinkin’,” and Hannah had returned with spirit:  “It won’t ever be broke unless it’s against my will, Silas Berry.  I know it seems considerable for Sylvy to have it all, but she’s took care of mother all those years, an’ I don’t begrutch it to her, an’ she’s a-goin’ to have it.  I don’t much believe Richard Alger will ever have her now she’s got so old, an’ she’d ought to have enough to live on the rest of her life an’ keep her comfortable.”

Therefore Sylvia’s sisters had a conviction that she was comfortably provided with worldly gear.  Mrs. Berry was even speculating upon the probability of her giving Rose something wherewith to begin house-keeping when her marriage with Tommy Ray took place.

The two sisters, with their daughters, came early that afternoon.  Mrs. Berry and Rose sewed knitted lace on pillow-slips; Mrs. Barnard and Charlotte were making new shirts for Cephas; Charlotte sat by the window and set beautiful stitches in her father’s linen shirt-bosoms, while her aunt Hannah’s tongue pricked her ceaselessly as with small goading thorns.

“I s’pose this seems kind of natural to you, don’t it, Charlotte, gettin’ pillow-slips ready?” said Mrs. Berry.

“I don’t know but it does,” answered Charlotte, never raising her eyes from her work.  Her mother flushed angrily.  She opened her mouth as if to speak, then she shut it again hard.

“Let me see, how many did you make?” asked Mrs. Berry.

“She made two dozen pair,” Charlotte’s mother answered for her.

“An’ you’ve got ’em all laid away, yellowin’?”

“I guess they ain’t yellowed much,” said Sarah Barnard.