“I’ll wait, thank you,” replied Eben Merritt.  For the moment he felt actually dismayed and ashamed at the sight of his ready interest money.  It was almost like having a good deed thrust back in his face and made of no account.  He had scarcely expected any payment, certainly none so full and prompt as this.

“I thought I’d let you see you hadn’t any cause to feel afraid you wouldn’t get it,” said Ann, with dignity.  “Elmira, you can put the money back in the stockin’ now, and put the stockin’ back under the feather-bed.”

Squire Merritt felt like a great school-boy before this small, majestic woman.  “I did not feel afraid, Mrs. Edwards,” he said, awkwardly.

“I didn’t know but you might,” said she, scornfully; “people didn’t seem to think we could do anything.”

“All I wonder at is,” said the Squire, rallying a little, “how you managed to get so much money together.”

“Do you want to know?  Well, I’ll tell you.  We’ve bound shoes, Elmira an’ me, for one thing.  We’ve took all they would give us.  That wa’n’t many, for the regular customers had to come first, and I didn’t do any in Abel’s lifetime—­that is, not after I was sick.  I used to a while before that.  Abel wouldn’t let me when we were first married, but he had to come to it.  Men can’t do all they’re willin’ to.  I shouldn’t have done anything but dress in silk, set an’ rock, an’ work scallops an’ eyelets in cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, if Abel had had his say.  After I was sick I quit workin’ on boots, because the doctor he said it might hurt the muscles of my back to pull the needle through the leather; but there’s somethin’ besides muscles in backs to be thought of when it comes to keepin’ body an’ soul together.  Two days after the funeral I sent Jerome up to Cyrus Robinson, and told him to ask him if he’d got some extra shoes to bind and close, and he come home with some.  Elmira and me bound, and Jerome closed, and we took our pay in groceries.  The shoes have fed us, with what we got out of the garden.  Then Elmira and me have braided mats and pieced quilts and sewed three rag carpets, and Elmira picked huckleberries and blackberries in season, and sold them to your wife and Miss Camilla and the doctor’s wife; and Lawyer Means bought lots of her, and the woman that keeps house for John Jennings bought a lot.  Elmira picked bayberries, too, and sold ’em to the shoemaker for tallow; she sold a lot in Dale.  Elmira did a good deal of the weeding in your sister’s garden, so’s to leave Jerome’s time clear.  Then once when the doctor’s wife had company she went over to help wash dishes, and she give her three an’ sixpence for that.  Elmira said she give it dreadful kind of private, and looked round to be sure the doctor wa’n’t within gunshot.  She give her a red merino dress of hers, too, but she kept her till after nightfall, and smuggled her out of the back door, with it all done up under her arm, lest the doctor should see.  They say she’s