As for Miss Annie, she took her walk, and stepped along the road as lightly and blithely as if the skies had been blue, and the sun shining; and almost before she knew it, she had reached the store at Howlett's.

Ascending the high steps to the porch, quite deserted on this damp, unpleasant morning, she entered the store, the proprietor of which immediately jumped up from the mackerel kit at the extreme end of the room, where he had been sitting in converse with some of his neighbors, and hurried behind the counter.
"Have you any tea," said Miss Annie, "better than the kind which you usually sell to Mrs Keswick ?" "No, ma'am," said he.

"We send her the very best tea we have." "I am not finding fault with it," she said, "but I thought you might have some extra kind, more expensive than people usually buy for common use." "No, ma'am," said he, "there is fancy teas of that kind, but you'd have to send to Philadelphia or New York for them." "How long would that take ?" she asked.
"I reckon it would be four or five days before you'd get it, ma'am," said the storekeeper.
"I am afraid," said Miss Annie, looking reflectively along the counter, "that that would be too long." And then she turned to go, but suddenly stopped.

"Have you any guava jelly ?" she asked.
The man smiled.

"We don't have no call for anything as fancy as that, ma'am," he said.