folks down to th'
village know 'bout the way we live?' Well, they burst out laughin', of
course. Well, then,' I says, ''tis plain to be seen that all they do in
winter is to go off to some foreign part and do the same as here,' so I
says to them, same's I said to you, Abby, a while back, that they'd better
save their breath to cool their porridge. But it's awful solemn eatin'
now, without a word spoke."

The other woman laughed. "Why, you don't have to talk 'bout foreign parts
or else keep still, do ye?"

"Oh, it's just so 'bout everythin'. We heard she'd been in Washington last
winter, so Eben he brisked up and tried her on politics. Well, she'd never
heard of direct primaries, they're raisin' such a holler 'bout in York
State; she didn't know what th' 'nsurgent senators are up to near as much
as we did, and to judge by the way she looked, she'd only just barely
heard of th' tariff." The word was pronounced with true New England
reverence. "Then we tried bringin' up children, and lumberin' an' roads,
an' cookin', an' crops, an' stock, an' wages, an' schools, an' gardenin',
but we couldn't touch bottom nowhere. Never a word to be had out'n her. So
we give up and now we just sit like stotin' bottles, an' eat--an' do our
visitin' with each other odd minutes afterward."

"Why, she don't look to be half-witted," said the other.

"She ain't!" cried Mrs. Pritchard with emphasis. "She's got as good a
headpiece, natchilly, as anybody. I remember her when she was a young one.
It's the fool way they're brung up! Everythin' that's any fun or intrust,
they hire somebody else to do it for 'em. Here she is a great strappin'
woman of twenty-two or three, with nothing in the world to do but to
traipse off 'cross the fields from mornin' to night--an' nobody to need
her there nor here, nor anywhere. No wonder she looks peaked. Sometimes
when I see her set and stare off, so sort o' dull and hopeless, I'm so
sorry for her I could cry! Good land! I'd as lief hire somebody to chew my
vittles for me and give me the dry cud to live off of, as do the way those
kind of folks do."

The distant call of a steam-whistle, silvered by the great distance into a
flute-like note, interrupted her. "That's the milk-train, whistling for
the Millbrook cross in'," she said. "We must be thinkin' of goin' home
before long. Where be those young ones?" She raised her voice in a call as
unexpectedly strong and vibrant as her laugh. "_Susie! Eddie_! Did they
a