"I have thought Melinda Jones handsome, but she can't hold a candle to you, nor nobody else I ever seen, except Miss Judge Miller, in Camden.

She do act some like you, with her gown dragglin' behind her half a yard." Thus flattered and complimented, Ethelyn shook out her skirts, which "draggled half a yard behind," and went downstairs to where Mrs.Jones sat working on Timothy's shirt, and Melinda was crocheting, while Mrs.
Markham, senior, clean and neat, and stiff in her starched, purple calico, sat putting a patch on a fearfully large hole in the knee of Andy's pants.

As Ethelyn swept into the room there fell a hush upon the inmates, and Mrs.Jones was almost guilty of an exclamation of surprise.
She had expected something fine, she said--something different from the Olney quality--but she was not prepared for anything as grand and queenly as Ethelyn, when she sailed into the room, with her embroidered handkerchief held so gracefully in her hands, and in response to Mrs.
Markham's introduction, bowed so very low, and slowly, too, her lips scarcely moving at all, and her eyes bent on the ground.

Mrs.Jones actually ran the needle she was sewing with under her thumb in her sudden start, while Melinda's crocheting dropped into her lap.

She, too, was surprised, though not as much as her mother.