Bascom, had sat for thirty years, applying a still more
powerful intellectual telescope to the doings of her neighbors.
Diadema's seat had formerly been on the less desirable side of
the little light-stand, where Priscilla Hollis was now installed.
Mrs. Bascom was at work on a new fore-room rug, the former one having
been transferred to Miss Hollis's chamber; for, as the teacher at the brick
schoolhouse, a graduate of a Massachusetts normal school, and the daughter
of a deceased judge, she was a boarder of considerable consequence.
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, and the two women were alone.
It was a pleasant, peaceful sitting-room, as neat as wax in every part.
The floor was covered by a cheerful patriotic rag carpet woven entirely
of red, white, and blue rags, and protected in various exposed localities
by button rugs,--red, white, and blue disks superimposed one on the other.
Diadema Bascom was a person of some sentiment. When her old father,
Captain Dennett, was dying, he drew a wallet from under his pillow,
and handed her a twenty-dollar bill to get something to remember him by.
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