They were a handsome family.

You used to sit with them sometimes, Nancy; Esther was great friends with you." "Yes, she was," Nancy replied, lifting the tattered cushion from its place and brushing it; "and I with her .-- What is the use of scrubbing and carpeting, when there are only twenty pew-cushions and six hassocks in the whole church, and most of them ragged?
How can I ever mend this ?" "I shouldn't trouble myself to darn other people's cushions!" This unchristian sentiment came in Mrs.Miller's ringing tones from the rear of the church.
"I don't know why," argued Maria Sharp.

"I'm going to mend my Aunt Achsa's cushion, and we haven't spoken for years; but hers is the next pew to mine, and I'm going to have my part of the church look decent, even if she is too stingy to do her share.

Besides, there aren't any Peabodys left to do their own darning, and Nancy was friends with Esther." "Yes, it's nothing more than right," Nancy replied, with a note of relief in her voice, "considering Esther." "Though he don't belong to the scrubbin' sex, there is one Peabody alive, as you know, if you stop to think, Maria; for Justin's alive, and livin' out West somewheres.

At least, he's as much alive as ever he was; he was as good as dead when he was twenty-one, but his mother was always too soft-hearted to bury him." There was considerable laughter over this sally of the outspoken Mrs.
Sargent, whose keen wit was the delight of the neighbourhood.
"I know he's alive and doing business in Detroit, for I got his address a week or ten days ago, and wrote, asking him if he'd like to give a couple of dollars toward repairing the old church." Everybody looked at Mrs.Burbank with interest.
"Hasn't he answered ?" asked Maria Sharp.
Nancy Wentworth held her breath, turned her face to the wall, and silently wiped the paint of the wainscoting.