One was hers, the other was Mrs.Babcock's.

Amanda's old blond face, with its folds of yellow-gray hair over the ears and sections of the softly-wrinkled, pinky cheeks, was bent over some needle-work.

So was Mrs.Babcock's, darkly dim with age, as if the hearth-fires of her life had always smoked, with a loose flabbiness about the jaw-bones, which seemed to make more evident the firm structure underneath.
Amanda was sewing a braided rug; her little veiny hands jerked the stout thread through with a nervous energy that was out of accord with her calm expression and the droop of her long slender body.
"It's pretty hard sewin' braided mats, ain't it ?" said Mrs.Babcock.
"I don't care how hard 'tis if I can get 'em sewed strong," replied Amanda, and her voice was unexpectedly quick and decided.

"I never had any feelin' that anything was hard, if I could only do it." "Well, you ain't had so much hard work to do as some folks.

Settin' in a rockin'-chair sewin' braided mats ain't like doin' the housework for a whole family.