"Sure Mike," said the boy, rather flippantly. "What's all new since you
was little?" he asked his aunt.
"Telephone, them talkin' machines, sewin' machines--anyhow, they were
mighty scarce then--trolleys----"
"Automobiles?"
"My goodness, yes! Them awful things! They scare the life out abody. I
don't go in none and I don't want no automobile hearse to haul me,
neither. I'd be afraid it'd run off."
"Great horn spoon, Aunt Rebecca, but that would be a gay ride," the boy
said, while Amanda giggled and Uncle Amos winked to Millie, who made a
hurried trip to the stove for coffee.
"Ach," came the aunt's rebuke. "You talk too much of that slang stuff.
I guess I'll take the next trolley home," she said, unconscious of the
merriment she had caused. "I'd like to help with the dishes, but I want
to get home before it gets so late for me. Anyhow, Amanda is big enough
to help. When I was big as her I cooked and baked and worked like a
woman. Why, when I was just a little thing, Mom'd tell me to go in the
front room and pick the snipples off the floor and I'd get down and do
it. Nobody does that now, neither. They run a sweeper over the carpets
and wear 'em out."
"But the floors are full of germs," said Amanda.
"Cherms--what are them?"
"Why, dreadful things! I learned about them at school. They are little,
crawly bugs with a lot of legs, and if you eat them or breathe them in
you'll get scarlet fever or diphtheria."
"Ach, that's too dumb!" Aunt Rebecca was unimpressed. "I don't believe
in no such things." With that emphatic remark she stalked to the
sitting-room for her bonnet. She met Phil coming out, his hands in his
pockets. He paused in the doorway as Amanda and her mother joined the
guest.
Aunt Rebecca lifted the black silk bonnet carefully from the little
table and Amanda shifted nervously from one foot to the other. If only
Aunt Rebecca wouldn't hold the bonnet so the worm would fall to the
floor! Then the woman gave the stiff headgear a dexterous turn and the
squirming thing landed on her head.
"My goodness! My goodness!" she cried as something soft brushed her
cheek. Intently inquisitive, she stooped and picked from the floor a
fat, green, wriggling tobacco worm.
"One of them cherms, I guess, Amanda, ain't?" she said as she looked
keenly at the child.