s things extry,
you see, and Dan he don't like it. But no doubt the ladies will take
notice of her."

"I thought the lady kind enough," interposed another woman. "She
noticed how lame our granny was with the rheumatics, and told me to send
up for broth."

"We wants somewhat bad enough," returned another thin woman, with her
hand to her side. "Nobody never does nothing for no one here!"

"Nor we don't want no one to come worriting and terrifying," cried the
last of the group, with fierce black eyes and rusty black hair sticking
out beyond her man's beaver hat, tied on with a yellow handkerchief.
"Always at one about church and school, and meddling with everything--
the ribbon on one's bonnet and to the very pots on the fire. I knows
what they be like in Tydeby! And what do you get by it, but old cast
clothes and broth made of dish-washings?" She enforced all this with
more than one word not to be written.

"I know, I'd be thankful for that!" murmured the thin woman, who looked
as if she had barely a petticoat on, and could have had scarcely a
breakfast.

"Oh, we all know's Bessy Mole is all for what she can get!" said the
independent woman, tossing her head.

"And had need to be," returned Molly Hewlett, in a scornful tone, which
made the poor woman in question stoop all the lower, and pull her
groundsel more diligently.

"The broth ain't bad," ventured she who had tried it.

"I shall see what I can get out of them," added another. "I bain't
proud; and my poor children's shoes is a shame to see."

"You'll not get much," said Molly Hewlett, with a sniff. "The captain,
as they calls him, come down on my Jem, as was taking home a little bit
of a chip for the fire, and made him put it down, as cross as could be."

"How now, you lazy, trolloping, gossiping women! What are you after?"

Farmer Goodenough was upon them; and the words he showered on them were
not by any means "good enough" to be repeated here. He stormed at them
for their idleness so furiously as to set off the babies in the hedge
screaming and yelling. Tirzah Todd, the gipsy-looking woman whom he
especially abused, tossed her head and marched off in the midst,
growling fiercely, to quiet her child; and he, sending a parting
imprecation after her, directed his violence upon poor Bessy Mole,
though all this time she had been creeping on, shaking, trembling, and
crying, under the pelting of the storm; but, unluckily, in her
nervousness and