Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/176

 However, when the Winthrop cousins begin to put on airs, and to talk about autograph letters from Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson addressed to their great-great-great-grandmother, and to show beautiful carved fans and lace handkerchiefs which she carried at State balls in Philadelphia and New York, I have to bite my tongue to keep from reminding them that they have no autograph letters of hers!

Then I go up into our garret, and look at Hannah's shabby old books, and I ride over to the place on the road where she tended the fire that night, and I think of the number of Hillsboro boys and girls to whom she opened the great world of books, and—somehow, I am just as well pleased that it was not the lovely Ann Mary who came back to our town and became my great-great-great-grandmother.