"I don't care anything about the butter and the tea," rejoined
Amanda, "but I 'most feel as if I'd better go home to-morrow."

"If," said Mrs. Babcock, "you want to go home instead of gittin' the
good of that excursion ticket, that you can stay a week on, you can,
Amanda Pratt. I'm goin' to stay now, if it kills me."

Chapter IX

The three women from Green River had been six days in Elliot, they
were going to leave the next morning, and Mrs. Field's secret had not
been discovered. Nothing but her ill favor in the village had saved
her. Nobody except Mrs. Jane Maxwell had come to call. Mrs. Babcock
talked and wondered about it a great deal to Mrs. Green and Amanda.

"It's mighty queer, seems to me, that there ain't a soul but that one
old woman set foot inside this house since we've been here," said
she. "It don't look to me as if folks here thought much of Mis'
Field. I know one thing: there couldn't three strange ladies come
visitin' to Green River without I should feel as if I'd ought to go
an' call an' find out who they was, an' pay 'em a little attention,
if I thought anything at all of the folks they was visitin'. There's
considerable more dress here, but I guess, on the whole, it ain't any
better a place to live in than Green River."

The three women had not had a very lively or pleasant visit in
Elliot. Jane Field, full of grim defiance of her own guilt and misery
and of them, was not a successful entertainer of guests. She fed them
as best she could with her scanty resources, and after her house-work
was done, took her knitting-work and sat with them in her gloomy
sitting-room, while they also kept busy at the little pieces of
handiwork they had brought with them.

They talked desperately of Green River and the people there; they
told Mrs. Field of this one and that one whom she had known, and in
whom she had been interested; but she seemed to have forgotten
everybody and everything connected with her old life.

"Ida Starr is goin' to marry the minister in October," Mrs. Babcock
had said the day but one after their arrival. "You know there was
some talk about it before you went away, Mis' Field. You remember
hearin' about it, don't you?"

"I guess I don't remember it," said Mrs. Field.

"Don't remember it? Why, Mis' Field, I should think you'd remember
that! It was town's talk how she followed him up. Well, she's got
him, an' she's been teachin'--you know she had Lois's school--to get
money