to
wash Monday mornin's, an' tied out the line betwixt the old
pucker-pear tree and the corner o' the barn, an' thought, 'Here I be
with the same kind o' week's work right over again.' I'd wonder kind
o' f'erce if I couldn't git out of it noways; an' now here I be out
of it, and an uprooteder creatur' never stood on the airth. Just as I
got to feel I had somethin' ahead come that spool-factory business.
There! you know he never was a forehanded man; his health was slim,
and he got discouraged pretty nigh before ever he begun. I hope he
don't know I'm turned out o' the old place. 'Is'iah's well off; he'll
do the right thing by ye,' says he. But my! I turned hot all over when
I found out what I'd put my name to,--me that had always be'n counted
a smart woman! I did undertake to read it over, but I couldn't sense
it. I've told all the folks so when they laid it off on to me some:
but hand-writin' is awful tedious readin' and my head felt that day as
if the works was gone.

"I ain't goin' to sag on to nobody," she assured me eagerly, as the
train rushed along. "I've got more work in me now than folks expects
at my age. I may be consid'able use to Isabella. She's got a family,
an' I'll take right holt in the kitchen or with the little gals. She
had four on 'em, last I heared. Isabella was never one that liked
house-work. Little gals! I do' know now but what they must be about
grown, time doos slip away so. I expect I shall look outlandish to
'em. But there! everybody knows me to home, an' nobody knows me to
Shrewsbury; 'twon't make a mite o' difference, if I take holt
willin'."

I hoped, as I looked at Mrs. Peet, that she would never be persuaded
to cast off the gathered brown silk bonnet and the plain shawl that
she had worn so many years; but Isabella might think it best to insist
upon more modern fashions. Mrs. Peet suggested, as if it were a matter
of little consequence, that she had kept it in mind to buy some
mourning; but there were other things to be thought of first, and so
she had let it go until winter, any way, or until she should be fairly
settled in Shrewsbury.

"Are your nieces expecting you by this train?" I was moved to ask,
though with all the good soul's ready talk and appealing manner I
could hardly believe that she was going to Shrewsbury for more than a
visit; it seemed as if she must return to the worn old farmhouse over
by the sheep-lands. She answered that one of the Barnes boys had
written a l