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 way you’d flatten it down right straight in the middle—you know you would.”

Miss Trueman pursed her lips quizzically.

“I’ve always thought, Carrie—lyn,” she added hastily, as her niece scowled, “that they put things askew to make ’em different—for a change, as you might say. Now, if they’re never in the middle, it’s about as tiresome, isn’t it?”

Elise, whose napkin-ring bore malignant witness to her loving aunt, Eliza Judd, laughed irrepressibly: she had more sense of humor than her sister. It was she who, though she had assisted in polishing the old copper kettle subsequently utilized as a holder for the tongs and shovel, had refused to consider the yet older wash-boiler in the light of a possible coal-scuttle, greatly to the relief of her aunt, who blushed persistently at any mention of the hearth.

She patted the older woman encouragingly.