Dotty needed no coaxing to keep on doing mischief, but hit the musical knife harder than ever, giving it a dizzy motion, like the clapper in a mill.

Prudy was quite annoyed by the sound, but did not really know whether to be nervous or not, and concluded to express her vexation in groans:  the groans she was giving in memory of the departed Mr. Shotwell, who had died of a “cannon bullet.”

“My good Mrs. Shotwell,” said Mrs. Piper, trying to “make conversation,” “I think I have got something in my eye:  will you please tell me how it looks?”

“O,” said Prudy, peeping into it, “your eye looks very well, ma’am; don’t you ’xcuse it; it looks well enough for me.”

“Ahem!” said Mrs. Piper, laughing, and settling her head-dress, which was Susy’s red scarf:  “are your feet warm, Mrs. Shotwell?”

“Thank you, ma’am,” replied Prudy, “I don’t feel ’em cold.  O, dear, if your husband was all deaded up, I guess you’d cry, Mrs. Piper.”

Susy and Flossy looked at each other, and smiled.  They thought Prudy seemed more like herself than they had known her for a long time.

“You must go right out of the parlor, Betsey,” said Mrs. Piper, flourishing the poker; “I mean you, Susy—­the parlor isn’t any place for hired girls.”

“Ma’am?” said Susy, inclining her head to one side, in order to hear better.

“O, dear! the plague of having a deaf girl!” moaned Mrs. Piper.  “You don’t know how trying it is, Mrs. Shotwell!  That hired girl, Betsey, hears with her elbows, Mrs. Shotwell; I verily believe she does!”

“O, no, ma’am,” replied Prudy; “I guess she doesn’t hear with her elbows, does she?  If she heard with her elbows, she wouldn’t have to ask you over again!”

This queer little speech set Mr. Piper and his wife, and their servant, all to laughing, and Betsey looked at her elbows, to see if they were in the right place.

“Will you please, ma’am,” said Prudy, “ask Betsey to hot a flatiron?  I’ve cried my handkerchief all up!”

“Yes; go right out, Betsey, and hot a flatiron,” said Mrs. Piper, very hospitably.  “Go out, this instant, and build a fire, Betsey.”

“Yes, go right out, Betsey,” echoed Mr. Piper, who could find nothing better to do than to repeat his wife’s words; for, in spite of himself, she did appear to be the “head of the family.”

“It was my darlin’ husband’s handkerchief,” sobbed Prudy.

“Rather a small one for a man,” said Mr. Piper, laughing.

“Well,” replied Prudy, rather quick for a thought, “my husband had a very small nose!”

Mrs. Piper tried to make more “conversation.”

“O, Mrs. Shotwell, you ought to be exceeding thankful you’re a widow, and don’t keep house!  I think my hired girls will carry down my gray hairs to the grave!  The last one I had was Irish, and very Catholic.”

Prudy groaned for sympathy, and wiped her eyes on that corner of her handkerchief which was supposed to be not quite “cried up.”