id that for her part she did not mind
it the least bit; but she would not allow him to speak so of a large
class of her sex which contained some of the best women in the world;
that many of them performed work and made sacrifices that the rest of
the world knew nothing about. She said the true word for them was the
old Saxon term "spinster"; that it proved that they performed the work
of the house, and that it was a term of honor of which she was proud.
She said that Christ had humbled himself to be born of a Virgin, and
that every woman had this honor to sustain. Of course such lectures as
that made us call her an old maid all the more. Still, I don't think
that being mischievous or teasing her made any difference with her.
Frank used to worry her more than any one else, even than Joe, and I am
sure she liked him best of all. That may perhaps have been because he
was the best-looking of us. She said once that he reminded her of some
one she used to know a long time before, when she was young. That must
have been a long time before, indeed. He used to tease the life out of
her.

She was extraordinarily credulous--would believe anything on earth
anyone told her, because, although she had plenty of humor, she herself
never would deviate from the absolute truth a moment, even in jest. I
do not think she would have told an untruth to save her life. Well, of
course we used to play on her to tease her. Frank would tell her the
most unbelievable and impossible lies: such as that he thought he saw
a mouse yesterday on the back of the sofa she was lying on (this would
make her bounce up like a ball), or that he believed he heard--he was
not sure--that Mr. Scroggs (the man who had rented her old home) had cut
down all the old trees in the yard, and pulled down the house because he
wanted the bricks to make brick ovens. This would worry her excessively
(she loved every brick in the old house, and often said she would rather
live in the kitchen there than in a palace anywhere else), and she would
get into such a state of depression that Frank would finally have to
tell her that he was just "fooling her".

She used to make him do a good deal of waiting on her in return, and he
was the one she used to get to dress old Fashion's back when it was raw,
and to put drops in her eyes. He got quite expert at it. She said it was
a penalty for his worrying her so.

She was the great musician of the connection. This is in itself no mean
pra