you worry about me tellin'," said she.

Chapter XVIII

Maria began her teaching on a September day. It was raining hard, but
there was all about an odd, fictitious golden light from the spray of
maple-leaves which overhung the village. Amity was a typical little
New England village--that is, it had departed but little from its
original type, although there was now a large plant of paper-mills,
which had called in outsiders. The outsiders were established by
themselves on a sort of Tom Tidler's ground called "Across the
River." The river was little more than a brook, except in spring,
when, after heavy snows, it sometimes verified its name of the Ramsey
River. Ramsey was an old family name in Amity, as Edgham was in
Edgham. Once, indeed, the little village had been called Ramsey Four
Corners. Then the old Ramsey family waned and grew less in popular
esteem, and one day the question of the appropriateness of naming the
village after them came up. There was another old family, by the name
of Saunders, between whom and the Ramseys had always been a dignified
New England feud. The Saunders had held their own much better than
the Ramseys. There was one branch especially, to which Judge Josiah
Saunders belonged, which was still notable. Judge Josiah had served
in the State legislature, he was a judge of the superior court, and
he occupied the best house in Amity, a fine specimen of the old
colonial mansion house, which had been in the Saunders family for
generations. Judge Saunders had made additions to this old mansion,
conservative, modern colonial additions, and it was really a noble
building. It was shortly after he had made the additions to his
house, and had served his first term as judge of the superior court,
that the question of changing the name of the village from Ramsey
Four Corners to Saunders had been broached. Meetings had been held,
in which the name of our celebrated townsman, the Honorable Josiah
Saunders, had been on every tongue. The Ramsey family obtained scant
recognition for past merits, but a becoming silence had been
maintained as to their present status. The only recognized survivors
of the old house of Ramsey at that time were the widow, Amelia
Ramsey, the wife of Anderson Ramsey, deceased, as she appeared in the
minutes of the meetings, and her son George, a lad of sixteen, and
the same who, in patched attire, had made love to Maria over the
garden fence when she was a child. It was about th