? Miss Horatia had taken her second-best parasol, with a deep
fringe, and had gone majestically down the street to do some morning
errands which she could trust to no one. Melissa was shelling peas at
the shady kitchen-doorstep, and Nelly came strolling round from the
garden, along the clean-swept flag-stones, and sat down to help her.
Melissa moved along, with a grim smile, to make room for her. "You
needn't bother yourself," said she: "I've nothing else to do. You'll
green your fingers all over." But she was evidently pleased to have
company.

"My fingers will wash," said Nelly, "and I've nothing else to do
either. Please push the basket this way a little, or I shall scatter
the pods, and then you will scold." She went to work busily, while she
tried to think of the best way to find out the story she wished to
hear.

"There!" said Melissa, "I never told Miss H'ratia to get some citron,
and I settled yesterday to make some pound-cake this forenoon after I
got dinner along a piece. She's most out o' mustard too; she's set
about having mustard to eat with her beef, just as the old colonel was
before her. I never saw any other folks eat mustard with their roast
beef; but every family has their own tricks. I tied a thread round my
left-hand little finger purpose to remember that citron before she
came down this morning. I hope I ain't losing my fac'lties." It was
seldom that Melissa was so talkative as this at first. She was clearly
in a talkative mood.

"Melissa," asked Nelly, with great bravery, after a minute or two of
silence, "who was it that my cousin Horatia was going to many? It's
odd that I shouldn't know; but I don't remember father's ever speaking
of it, and I shouldn't think of asking her."

"I s'pose it'll seem strange to you," said Melissa, beginning to shell
the peas a great deal faster, "but, as many years as I have lived in
this house with her,--her mother, the old lady, fetched me up,--I
never knew Miss H'ratia to say a word about him. But there! she knows
I know, and we've got an understanding on many things we never talk
over as some folks would. I've heard about it from other folks. She
was visiting her great-aunt in Salem when she met with him. His name
was Carrick, and it was presumed they was going to be married when he
came home from the voyage he was lost on. He had the promise of going
out master of a new ship. They didn't keep company long: it was made
up of a sudden, and folks here didn't