Of the stout old country grandmamma,
with a basket full of doughnuts and early apples, that made a spiciness
and orchard fragrance all about her, and that she surely never meant to
eat herself, seeing, first, that she had not a tooth in her head, and
also that she made repeated anxious requests of the conductor, catching
him by the coat-skirts as he passed, to "let her know in season when
they began to get into Bartley;" who asked, confidentially, of her next
neighbor, a well-dressed elderly gentleman, if "he didn't think it was
about as cheap comin' by the cars as it would ha' ben to hire a passage
any other way?" and innocently endured the smile that her query called
forth on half a dozen faces about her. The gentleman, _without_ a smile,
courteously lowered his newspaper to reply that "he always thought it
better to avail one's self of established conveniences rather than to
waste time in independent contrivances;" and the old lady sat back,--as
far back as she dared, considering her momentary apprehension of
Bartley,--quite happily complacent in the confirmation of her own
wisdom.
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