shirts. Those you have are getting past mending."

"Do you think I'll let you spend your money in that way?"

"You'll let me spend MY money just as I please--in the way that will do me the
most good!"

"What a saucy little woman you are becoming!" he said, looking at her so
fondly that she quickly averted her eyes. "It's a way people fall into when
humored," she answered.

"See here, Alida, you're up to some magic. It seems but the other day I
brought you here, a pale ghost of a woman. As old Jonathan Johnson said, you
were 'enj'yin' poor health.' Do you know what he said when I took him off so
he wouldn't put you through the catechism?"

"No," she replied, with a deprecating smile and rising color.

"He said he was 'afeared I'd been taken in, you were such a sickly lookin'
critter.' Ha! Ha! Wish he might see you now, with that flushed face of
yours. I never believed in magic, but I'll have to come to it. You are
bewitched, and are being transformed into a pretty young girl right under my
eyes; the house is bewitched, and is growing pretty, too, and pleasanter all
the time. The cherry and apple trees are bewitched, for they never blossomed
so before; the hens are bewitched, they lay as if possessed; the--"

"Oh, stop! Or I shall think that you're bewitched yourself."

"I truly begin to think I am."