, then, you won't do that," said Annie; "Lizzie to come before
me, John; and she can't stir a pot of brewis, and scarce knows a tongue
from a ham, John, and says it makes no difference, because both are
good to eat! Oh, Betty, what do you think of that to come of all her
book-learning?"

"Thank God he can't say that of me," Betty answered shortly, for she
never cared about argument, except on her own side; "thank he, I says,
every marning a'most, never to lead me astray so. Men is desaving and so
is galanies; but the most desaving of all is books, with their heads
and tails, and the speckots in 'em, lik a peg as have taken the maisles.
Some folk purtends to laugh and cry over them. God forgive them for
liars!"

It was part of Betty's obstinacy that she never would believe in reading
or the possibility of it, but stoutly maintained to the very last that
people first learned things by heart, and then pretended to make them
out from patterns done upon paper, for the sake of astonishing honest
folk just as do the conjurers. And even to see the parson and clerk was
not enough to convince her; all she said was, "It made no odds, they
were all the same as the rest of us." And now that she had been on
the farm nigh upon forty years, and had nursed my father, and made his
clothes, and all that he had to eat, and then put him in his coffin, she
was come to such authority, that it was not worth the wages of the best
man on the place to say a word in answer to Betty, even if he would face
the risk to have ten for one, or twenty.

Annie was her love and joy. For Annie she would do anything, even so far
as to try to smile, when the little maid laughed and danced to her. And
in truth I know not how it was, but every one was taken with Annie at
the very first time of seeing her. She had such pretty ways and manners,
and such a look of kindness, and a sweet soft light in her long blue
eyes full of trustful gladness. Everybody who looked at her seemed to
grow the better for it, because she knew no evil. And then the turn she
had for cooking, you never would have expected it; and how it was her
richest mirth to see that she had pleased you. I have been out on the
world a vast deal as you will own hereafter, and yet have I never seen
Annie's equal for making a weary man comfortable.

CHAPTER VII

HARD IT IS TO CLIMB

[Illustration: 051.jpg Illustrated Capital]

So many a winter night went by in a hopeful and pleasant manner,