"She hadn't any use for it," she squeaked, plaintively.
"Robbing the dead! Its bad enough to rob the living." "She couldn't have worn that dress without any back breadth while she was living," argued Flora, "but now it don't make any odds.

It don't show." "What were you going to do with it ?" Flora was scared into a storm of injured confession.

"You 'ain't any call to talk to me so, Mrs.Whitman," she said.

"I've worked hard, and I 'ain't had a decent black silk dress for ten years." "How can you have a dress made out of a back breadth, I'd like to know ?" "It's just the same quality that Mrs.Hiram Adams's was, and--" Flora hesitated.
"Flora Barnes, you don't mean to say that you're robbing the dead of back breadths till you get enough to make you a whole dress ?" Flora whimpered.

"Business has been awful poor lately," she said.
"It's been so healthy here we've hardly been able to earn the salt to our porridge.