asty, authoritative glance at the range, banging the door shut with a
decision that made Mr. Pawket jump as she snapped:

"Just the same, this here ain't no place for a vanilla. A vanilla around
these parts would be the same as if you was to wear your Sunday silk hat
out a-plowin'. They hain't got good judgment, them two hain't."

The old farmer regarded his wife with serious attention. Lighting his
pipe, he lay back in the Turkey-red chair, puffing in silence. At last
he laid the pipe down and, laboriously pulling off his boots, hummed an
air which had for its sole motif the undynamic suggestion:

"By and by
By and by
By and by. By and by. By and by."

At last the thumping of stocking feet ceased with the drone of the
drowsy voice; a bit of sunlight filtering first through the tulip-trees,
then through the little low kitchen window, let it be seen that Mr.
Pawket had lapsed into slumber. His wife looked at him with an
expressionless face. Wringing her hands out of the dish-water, she
carried the pan to the door; with contemptuous words of warning to some
chickens near by, she flung the contents on the grass. Going further
into the door-yard she dragged up some bleached clothing and stuffed it
into a clothes-basket. Choking the range full of coal, wrenching into
place a refractory coal-scuttle, she turned the damper in the stove-pipe
and set the stove-plates slightly a-tilt. Then she seized the tin
wash-basin, and, setting up a small mirror against the window, loosened
her hair and dragged her face and head through a severe toilet whose
original youthful motive of comeliness had been lost in habitual effort
of tidiness. This done, Mrs. Pawket donned a clean white apron and
draped around her neck a knitted orange tie which she pinned with a
scarlet coral breast-pin.

Having thus dressed for the afternoon and for the feared, desired, but
seldom experienced visitation called "company," Mrs. Pawket took from
her pocket the screw her grandson had bestowed upon her. Suddenly, with
the expression of one who in the interests of art performs dangerous
acrobatic feats, she dragged a chair in front of a cupboard. Climbing,
with many expressions of insecurity, on this chair, Mrs. Pawket reached
a bony hand into the cupboard, groping on the top shelf for an object
which her fingers approached tremulously. This object with considerable
care Mrs. Pawket brought down to earth and set upon the kitchen table.
It was a