other conversation at the sewing
circle. Her comments upon people she had met and things she had seen,
were in the line of a monologue.

"I do sartainly grow tired of Poketown when it comes fall, and things is
dead, and the wind gets cold, and all. I'm sartain sure glad to git shet
of it!" she pursued on this particular afternoon. "And then the first
sight of Boston--and the mud--and the Common and Public Library,--and
the shops, and all, make me feel like I was livin' again.

"Mabel says to me: 'How kin you live, Maw, most all the year in
Poketown! Why, I was so glad to git away from it, that I'd walk the
streets and beg before I'd go back to it again!' An' she would; Mabel's
lively yet, if she has been married ten years and got three children.

"But by this time o' year--arter bein' three months or more in the
hurly-burly of Boston, I'm _de_-lighted to git into the country. Ye see,
city folks keep dancin' about so. They're always on the go. They ain't
no rest for a body."

"But you ain't got ter go because other folks dooes, Miz' Petrie,"
suggested old lady Scattergood. "Now, when I go ter see my son-in-law at
Skunk's Holler, I jest sit down an' fold my hands, an' _rest_."

"Skunk's Holler!" murmured one of the other women. "To hear Miz'
Scattergood talk, one 'ud think she was traveled, too. An' she ain't
never been out o' sight o' this lake, I do believe."

"If ye don't go yourself, you feel's though you had," said Mrs. Petrie,
with good nature. "So much bustle around you--yes. An' so I tell my
daughters. I git enough of it b'fore spring begins."

"But," said the minister's wife, timidly, "after all, there isn't so
much difference between Poketown and Boston, excepting that Boston is so
very much bigger. People are about the same everywhere. And one house is
like another, only one's bigger----"

"Now, that's right foolish talk, Miz' Middler!" exclaimed the lady so
recently from the Hub. "The people's just as different as chalk is from
cheese; and there ain't a church in Boston--and there's hundreds of
'em--that don't make our Union Church look silly."

"But, Miz' Petrie," cried one inquiring body. "Just what is it that
makes Boston so different from Poketown? After all, folks is folks--and
houses is houses--and streets is streets. Ain't that so?"

"Wa-al!" The traveled lady was stumped for a moment. Then she burst out
with: "There! I'll tell ye. It's 'cause there's some order in the city;
ev'rything here