“Buy it!” Ruby repeated, rubbing her hands in ecstasy.  “It will bring a big price when they know it was yours and you made it.  I’ll see that it has a conspicuous place.  And now I must go and see Mrs. Biggs again about the sale.  Good-by, and keep up your courage.”

She stooped and kissed Eloise, who heard her next in the kitchen talking to Mrs. Biggs, first of rubber bands and massage, and then of the Rummage Sale.  When she was gone Mrs. Biggs came in and sat down and began to give her opinion of the Rummage Sale, and massage and rubber bands, and first the Rummage.  A good way to get rid of truck, and Ruby Ann said they took everything.  She had a lot of old chairs and a warming pan and foot-stove, and she s’posed she might give the spotted brown and white calico wrapper which Eloise had worn.  It was faded and out of style.  Yes, on the whole, she’d give the wrapper.  She never liked it very well, she said; and then she spoke of the rubber band Ruby Ann had recommended instead of wormwood and vinegar, and of which she did not approve.  What did Ruby Ann know? though, to be sure, she was old enough.  How old did Eloise think she was?  Eloise had not given her age a thought, but, pressed for an answer, ventured the reply that she might be verging on to thirty.

“Verging on to thirty!  More likely verging on to forty,” Mrs. Biggs said, with a savage click of the needles with which she was knitting Tim a sock.  “I know her age, if she does try to look young and wear a sailor hat, and ride a wheel in a short gown!  I’d laugh to see me ridin’ a wheel, and there ain’t so much difference between us neither.  I know, for we went to school together.  She was a little girl, to be sure, and sat on the low seat and learnt her a-b-c’s.  I was four or five years older, and sat on a higher seat with Amy Crompton, till the Colonel took her from the district school and kep’ her at home with a governess.”

Mrs. Biggs was very proud of the acquaintance she had had with Amy Crompton, when the two played together under the trees which shaded the school-house the Colonel had built as expiatory years before, and she continued:  “Amy, you know, is the half-cracked lady at the Crompton House who sent the hat and slippers.  She’s been married twice,—­run away the first time.  My land! what a stir there was about it, and what a high hoss the Colonel rode.  Who her second was nobody knows,—­some scamp by the name of Smith,—­that’s your name, and a good one, too, but about the commonest in the world, I reckon.  There’s four John Smiths in town, and Joel Smith, who brings my milk, and George Smith I buy aigs of, and forty odd more.  They say the Colonel hates the name like pisen.  Won’t have anybody work for him by that name.  Dismissed his milkman because he was a Smith, and between you and I, I b’lieve half his opposition to you was your name.  Why, it’s like a red rag to a bull.”