“In the old Pyncheon House, and underneath the Pyncheon Elm! Who would have thought it? Old Maid Pyncheon is setting up a cent-shop!”

“Will she make it go, think you, Dixey;” said his friend. “I don’t call it a very good stand. There’s another shop just round the corner.”

“Make it go!” cried Dixey, with a most contemptuous expression, as if the very idea were impossible to be conceived. “Not a bit of it! Why, her face — I’ve seen it, for I dug her garden for her one year — her face is enough to frighten the Old Nick himself, if he had ever so great a mind to trade with her.

People can’t stand it, I tell you! She scowls dreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness of temper.”