' not raps them with the knuckles, or go about seekin' to make
summat off of each."

Andy was in no mood for moralizing.

"Ye'r' hard on old Wart in that last remark, I'm thinkin',"--glancing at
the dumpy bunch of a woman seated at their breakfast-table within, her
greedy blue eyes and snub-nose close to her plate.

The Quaker turned away, trying to hide a smile, and began tugging at
some dock-weeds. Her arms were tougher and stronger than Fawcett's. He
used to say Jane was a better worker than he, though she did it by fits
and starts, going at it sometimes as if every limb was iron and was
moved by a steam-engine, and then for days doing nothing, playing with a
neighbor's baby, sitting by the window, humming some old tune to
herself, in a way that even Andy thought idle and childish. For the
rest, he had thought little about her, except that she was a strangely
clean and silent woman, and kind, even to tenderness,--to him; but to
the very bats in the barn, or old Wart, or any other vermin, as well.

Perhaps an artist would have found more record in the brawny frame and
the tanned, chronicled face of the woman, as she bent over her work in
her gray dress in the fresh morning light. Forty years of hard, healthy
labor,--you could read that in the knotted muscles and burnt skin: and
no lack of strength in the face, with its high Indian cheek-bones and
firm-set jaws. But there was a curious flickering shadow of grace and
beauty over all this coarse hardness. The eyes were large, like the
cow's under yonder tree, slow-moving, absorbing, a soft brown in color,
and unreasoning; if pain came to this woman, she would not struggle, nor
try to understand it: bear it dumbly, that was all. The nervous lips
were not heavy, but delicately, even archly cut, with dimples waiting
the slightest moving of the mouth; you would be sure that naturally the
laughter and fun and cheery warmth of the world lay as close to her as
to a child. But something--some loss or uncertainty in her life--had
given to her smile a quick, pitiful meaning, like that of a mother
watching her baby at her breast.

Andy climbed into the wagon, and cracked his whip impatiently.

"Time!" he shouted.

Neighbor Wart scuffed down the path, wiping her mouth.

"I'm glad I dropped in to breakfast, an' for company to friend Andrew
here. Does thee frequent the prize-fighters' ring, that thee's got their
slang so pat, lad?" as she scrambled in behind him. "Don't jerk a