Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville
The
little maid was country bred, but having seen glimpses of city life and
possessing much native good taste, she arranged the rooms so charmingly
that they would admit of scant improvement. The big living room must
serve as a dining room as well as parlor; but so spacious was it that
such an arrangement proved easy. No especial furniture for the living
room had been provided, but by stealing a few chairs and odd pieces from
the ample supply provided for the bedrooms, adding the two quaint sofas
and the upright piano and spreading the rugs in an artistic fashion,
Ethel managed to make the "parlor part" of the room appear very cosy.
The dining corner had a round table and high-backed chairs finished in
weathered oak, and when all was in order the effect was not
inharmonious. Some inspiration had induced Mr. Merrick to send down a
batch of eighteen framed pictures, procured at a bargain but from a
reliable dealer. He thought they might "help out," and Ethel knew they
would, for the walls of the old house were quite bare of ornament. She
made them go as far as possible, and Old Hucks, by this time thoroughly
bewildered, hung them where she dictated and made laughable attempts to
describe the subjects to blind Nora.
A telegram, telephoned over from the junction, announced the proposed
arrival of the party on Thursday morning, and the school-teacher was
sure that everything would be in readiness at that time. The paint on
Lon's repairs would be dry, the grass in the front yard was closely
cropped, and the little bed of flowers between the corn-crib and the
wood-shed was blooming finely. The cow was in the stable, the pigs in
the shed, and the Plymouth Rocks strutted over the yard with an absurd
assumption of pride.
Wednesday Ethel took Old Hucks over to Millville and bought for him from
Sam Cotting a new suit of dark gray "store clothes," together with
shirts, shoes and underwear. She made McNutt pay the bill with John
Merrick's money, agreeing to explain the case to "the nabob" herself,
and back up the agent in the unauthorized expenditure.
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In a village there lived two men who had the self-same name. Both were named Claus. But one of them owned four horses, and the other owned only one horse; so to distinguish between them people called the man who had four horses Big Claus, and the man who had only one horse Little Claus. Now I'll tell you what happened to these two, for this is a true story.
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