e, though she
kep 'em curbed down, and cut off (the hairs).

[Illustration: A good-appearin' woman.]

Her husband had been a man of wealth, as you could see plain by the
house that he left her a-livin' in. But some of her property she had
lost through poor investments--and don't it beat all how wimmen do git
cheated, and every single man she deals with a-tellin' her to confide in
him freely, for he hain't but one idee, and that is to look out for her
interests, to the utter neglect of his own, and a-warnin' her aginst
every other man on earth but himself.

But, to resoom. She had lost some of her property, and bein' without
children, and kind o' lonesome, and a born housekeeper and cook, her
idee of takin' in a few respectable and agreeable boarders wuz a good
one.

She wuz a good calculator, and the best maker of pancakes I ever see,
fur or near. She oversees her own kitchen, and puts on her own hand and
cooks, jest when she is a mind too. She hain't afraid of the face of man
or woman, though she told me, and I believe it, that "her cook wuz that
cross and fiery of temper, that she would skair any common person almost
into coniption fits."

"But," sez she, "the first teacup that she throwed at me, because I
wanted to make some pancakes, wuz the last."

I don't know what she done to her, but presoom that she held her with
her eye. It is a firm and glitterin' one as I ever see.

Anyway, she put a damper onto that cook, and turns it jest when she is
a mind to--to the benefit of her boarders; for better vittles wuz never
cooked than Miss Plank furnishes her boarders at moderate rates and the
comforts of a home, as advertisements say.

Her house wuz kep clean and sweet too, which wuz indeed a boon.

She talked a sight about her husband, which I don't know as she could
help--anyway, I guess she didn't try to.

She told me the first oppurtunity what a good Christian he wuz, how
devoted to her, and how much property he laid up, and that he wuz "in
salt."

I thought for quite a spell she meant brine, and dassent hardly enquire
into the particulars, not knowin' what she had done by the departed,
widders are so queer.

But after she had mentioned to me more'n a dozen times her love for the
departed, and his industrious and prosperous ways, and tellin' me every
single time, "he wuz in salt," I found out that she meant that he wuz in
the salt trade--bought and sold, I spozed.

I felt better.

But oh, how she did