s, when they found out about the
lantern, used to look oddly at Andy, and one or two of them had tried in
consequence to overreach him in the bills. But no thimble-rigger had a
keener eye for the cents than Fawcett. So their milk-speculation had
prospered, until, this spring, they had added to their stock of cows. It
was the only business in which Andy was partner; after he brought the
wagon back at noon, he put on his flannel shirt, and worked as a hired
hand for the woman; the other produce she sold herself.

The house was low, built of lichen-covered stone, an old buttonwood-tree
tenting it over; in the sunny back-yard you could see fat pullets and
glossy-backed Muscovy ducks wabbling in and out through the
lilac-bushes. Comfortable and quaint the old place looked, with no bald
white paint about it, no unseemly trig new fences to jar against the
ashen and green tones of color in house and woods. The gate by which you
passed through the stone wall was made of twisted boughs; and wherever a
tree had been cut down, the stump still stood, covered with
crimson-leaved ivy. "I'd like things nattier," Andy used to say; "but
it's Jane's way."

The Quaker woman herself, as she stood in the gateway in her gray
clothes, the hair pushed back from her sallow face, her brown, muscular
arms bare, suited the quiet, earnest look of the place.

"Thee'll take neighbor Wart into town, Andrew?" she said.

"More noosances?" he growled.

"Thee'd best take her in, Andrew. It costs thee nothing," with a dry,
quizzical smile.

Andy's face grew redder than his shirt, as he climbed up on the
wagon-wheel.

"H'ist me up her basket here, then. A'n't I kind to her? I drink my
coffee every noon at her stall, though 't's the worst in the market. If
'twas a man had sech a bamboozlin' phiz as hers, I'd bat him over th'
head, that 's all."

"She's a widow, and thee's afraid of thy weak point," said Jane.

"Take yer joke, Jane." The lad looked down on the woman's bony face
kindly. "They don't hurt, yer words. It's different when some folks
pokes fun at me, askin' for the lantern, an'"--

"What odds?" said the woman hurriedly, a quick change coming over her
face. "They mean well. Haven't I told thee since the night thee comed
here first for a meal's victuals, an' all the years since, how as all
the world meaned well to thee, Andrew? Not only sun an' air an' growth,
an' God behind; but folks, ef thee takes them by the palm of the hand
first, an