and she
always wore a string of gold beads around her creasy neck. She never
took off the gold beads except to put them under her pillow at night,
she was so afraid of their being stolen. Old Mrs. Little had always been
nervous about thieves, although none had ever troubled her.

"You may go into the pantry, an' bring out the nutmeg now, Ann Mary,"
said she presently, with dignity.

Ann Mary soberly slipped down from her chair and went. She realized that
she had made a mistake. It was quite an understood thing for Ann Mary to
have an eye upon her grandmother while she was cooking, to be sure that
she put in everything that she should, and nothing that she should not,
for the old woman was absent-minded. But it had to be managed with great
delicacy, and the corrections had to be quite irrefutable, or Ann Mary
was reprimanded for her pains.

When Ann Mary had deposited the nutmeg-box and the grater at her
grandmother's elbow, she took up her station again. She sat at a corner
of the table in one of the high kitchen-chairs. Her feet could not touch
the floor, and they dangled uneasily in their stout leather shoes, but
she never rested them on the chair round, nor even swung them by way of
solace. Ann Mary's grandmother did not like to have her chair rounds
all marked up by shoes, and swinging feet disturbed her while she was
cooking. Ann Mary sat up, grave and straight. She was a delicate,
slender little girl, but she never stooped. She had an odd resemblance
to her grandmother; a resemblance more of manner than of feature. She
held back her narrow shoulders in the same determined way in which the
old woman held her broad ones; she walked as she did, and spoke as she
did.

Mrs. Little was very proud of Ann Mary Evans; Ann Mary was her only
daughter's child, and had lived with her grandmother ever since she was
a baby. The child could not remember either her father or mother, she
was so little when they died.

Ann Mary was delicate, so she did not go to the village to the public
school. Miss Loretta Adams, a young lady who lived in the neighborhood,
gave her lessons. Loretta had graduated in a beautiful white muslin
dress at the high-school over in the village, and Ann Mary had a great
respect and admiration for her. Loretta had a parlor-organ, and could
play on it, and she was going to give Ann Mary lessons after
Thanksgiving. Just now there was a vacation. Loretta had gone to Boston
to spend two weeks with her cousi