"The way Lily Miller used to talk about Luella was enough to make you
mad and enough to make you cry," said Lydia Anderson. "I've been in
there sometimes toward the last when she was too feeble to cook and
carried her some blanc-mange or custard--somethin' I thought she might
relish, and she'd thank me, and when I asked her how she was, say she
felt better than she did yesterday, and asked me if I didn't think she
looked better, dreadful pitiful, and say poor Luella had an awful time
takin' care of her and doin' the work--she wa'n't strong enough to do
anythin'--when all the time Luella wa'n't liftin' her finger and poor
Lily didn't get any care except what the neighbours gave her, and
Luella eat up everythin' that was carried in for Lily. I had it real
straight that she did. Luella used to just sit and cry and do nothin'.
She did act real fond of Lily, and she pined away considerable, too.
There was those that thought she'd go into a decline herself. But
after Lily died, her Aunt Abby Mixter came, and then Luella picked up
and grew as fat and rosy as ever. But poor Aunt Abby begun to droop
just the way Lily had, and I guess somebody wrote to her married
daughter, Mrs. Sam Abbot, who lived in Barre, for she wrote her mother
that she must leave right away and come and make her a visit, but Aunt
Abby wouldn't go. I can see her now. She was a real good-lookin'
woman, tall and large, with a big, square face and a high forehead that
looked of itself kind of benevolent and good. She just tended out on
Luella as if she had been a baby, and when her married daughter sent
for her she wouldn't stir one inch. She'd always thought a lot of her
daughter, too, but she said Luella needed her and her married daughter
didn't. Her daughter kept writin' and writin', but it didn't do any
good. Finally she came, and when she saw how bad her mother looked,
she broke down and cried and all but went on her knees to have her come
away. She spoke her mind out to Luella, too. She told her that she'd
killed her husband and everybody that had anythin' to do with her, and
she'd thank her to leave her mother alone. Luella went into hysterics,
and Aunt Abby was so frightened that she called me after her daughter
went. Mrs. Sam Abbot she went away fairly cryin' out loud in the
buggy, the neighbours heard her, and well she might, for she never saw
her mother again alive. I went in that night when Aunt Abby called for
me, standin' in the do