ike to make one. It's real easy an' it don't cost a great deal--but
then cost ain't much object to you." Mrs. Maxwell laughed an
unpleasant snigger. Then she resumed: "Some tidies would look real
handsome on some of them great bare chairs over to your house; there
ain't one there so far as I know. Thomas he wouldn't never have a new
thing in the house; he was terrible set and notional about it and he
was terrible tight with his money. I don't care if I do say it;
everybody knows it; an' I don't see why it's any worse to say things
that's true about the dead than the livin'. With some folks it's all
'Oh, don't say nothin'; he's dead. Cover it all up; he's buried an'
bury it too, an' set all the roses an' pinks a-growin' over it.' I
tell you sometimes nettles will sprout, an' when they do, it don't
make it any better to call 'em pinks. Thomas Maxwell was terrible
tight. I ain't forgot how he talked because we bought this parlor
furniture and put big lights in the windows, an' had that iron fence.
Then my poor husband had gone into business with your husband, an'
they seemed to be making money. Why shouldn't he have bought a few
things we'd always done without, I'd like to know? You remember what
a time the old man made when we bought these things, Esther, I
suppose?"

"I can't say as I do," returned Mrs. Field.

"Why, seems to me it's funny you don't. You sure?"

Mrs. Field nodded.

"Well, it's queer you don't. He made an awful time over it; but the
worst of it was over that image out in the yard. I b'lieve he always
thought my poor husband and yours failed up because we bought that
image. There was one thing about it, your husband wa'n't never
extravagant, though, was he? Thomas Maxwell couldn't say his son
wasted his money, whatever else he said. Your husband was always
prudent, wa'n't he, Esther?"

"Yes, I always thought Edward Maxwell was prudent," returned Mrs.
Field.

Lois, staring soberly and miserably out of the window, saw just then
a stout girlish figure, leant to one side with the weight of a
valise, pass hurriedly out of the yard. She wondered if it was Flora
Maxwell, and watched the pink flowers in her hat and the blue folds
of her dress out of sight down the street.

"I guess your husband took after his father a little; I guess he was
a little savin'," said Mrs. Maxwell. "I know Edward looked kind of
scared when he came over one night an' saw that image just after we'd
got it set up, an' he asked