Here! you let it alone,
an' byme-by we'll open it. Se' down here on the lounge. There, now! I
guess I can tell ye. It was sister 'Liza's chist, an' she kep' it up
attic. She begun it when we wa'n't more 'n girls goin' to Number Six,
an' she's been fillin' on't ever sence."
"Begun it! You talk as if 't was a quilt!" Isabel began to laugh.
"Now don't!" said her aunt, in great distress. "Don't ye! I s'pose 't
was because we was such little girls an' all when 'Liza started it, but
it makes me as nervous as a witch, an' al'ays did. You see, 'Liza was a
great hand for deaths an' buryin's; an' 'as for funerals, she'd ruther
go to 'em than eat. I'd say that if she was here this minute, for more
'n once I said it to her face. Well, everybody 't died, she saved
suthin' they wore or handled the last thing, an' laid it away in this
chist; an' last time I see it opened, 'twas full, an' she kind o'
smacked her lips, an' said she should have to begin another. But the
very next week she was took away."
"Aunt Luceba," said Isabel suddenly, "was aunt Eliza hard to live with?
Did you and aunt Mary Ellen have to toe the mark?"
"Don't you say one word," answered her aunt hastily. "That's all past
an' gone. There ain't no way of settlin' old scores but buryin' of 'em.
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