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206 blunderbuss at certain youths of Weston who had raided the row of oxheart cherries in their orchard, and had allowed a horse to die of distemper without calling in a veterinary surgeon. As for the girl, Julia Keswick, she wasn't so bad as the two old she-dragons, but she was reputed to be a spitfire and hard to hold down. This, however, Conkling found neutralized by later information to the effect that the girl was as shy as a rabbit, and no one ever knew what she was up to. But she gave herself airs, chiefly, apparently, because she had been at a convent school in Quebec.

"And there was them as called her a beauty, and them as preferred a woman with more meat'n a sparrow on her bones!"

Yet the data concerning her two aunts, Georgina and Lavinia Keswick, was less ambiguous in coloring. These two antique maiden ladies were variously described as "a couple of old crows," "a pair o' bloodless old hardheads," and "a team o' skinflints who put pennies in the collection plate of a Sunday." There had been a