Mattie was the cousin David had imported from the low country to relieve Cassandra from the burden of the work in the home below. Although a disappointment to them, she still did her work after her own fashion, clumsily and slowly, but her Aunt ‘Marthy’ was never at rest, prodding the dull nature forward, trying to make her take the interest Cassandra had done.

David had wisely persuaded his wife to leave them to themselves, to work out the problem of adjustment to the new conditions as best they might, and his persuasions had been of a more peremptory nature than he realized. To Cassandra they had been as commands, but now — when the weaving on which the widow had counted so much was likely to be ruined by Mattie’s unskilled hands — the old mother had declared she could not bear to see her