"I'll tell ye naow, Almiry, I'm goin' ter have a gaown cut by Janie come
fall, ef it takes all the egg money ter pay fer it!"

"Why Aunt Sophrony!" was all the astonished Almira could ejaculate. Such
splendid courage was quite beyond the meek little woman's comprehension.

"Miss Wilson's baby has cut another tooth, that makes five, an' she's a
doin' well too," continued Mrs. Hodgkins, "but that ain't a flea bite to
what I heerd next.

"Ye know the Marvin's old Uncle Jehiel, him that lived with them five year
an' then went off, nobody knows where, without sayin' a word to 'em? Well,
he's been heard from! A lawyer has writ ter Jack Marvin's father sayin'
there's a will, an' sech a will I'll be baound wuz never heerd of before!

"He's left five hundred dollars ter come ter Jack when he's twenty-one, ef
by that time he's given any sign of 'mountin' ter anything as a scholar, a
farmer, a preacher or a storekeeper.

"Did ye ever hear anything like the choice?

"An' then he says, the old rascal, that ef by that time he hasn't made
something of himself in one or t'other er them things, that the money can
be given ter his cousin Dot, whatever she's done or hasn't done, bein's
he's never expected anything of her, she bein' only a girl.

"That made me bile when I heerd it, fer the old critter ought ter think
pretty well er girls and women. They say, as er boy he lived with his aunt
who gave him a good edication; a cousin er his'n, a woman by the way, set