s we called
him, the overseer.

"Well, that'll be nice," said I.

"I don't want to," she said. "I like to wait on table better."

"Then why do you change?" said I.

"Mr. Gowdy--," began Ma Fewkes, but was interrupted by her daughter, who
talked on until her mother was switched off from her explanation.

"I wun't work with niggers!" said Rowena. "That Pinck has brought a
yellow girl here from Dubuque, and she's goin' to wait on the table as
she did in Dubuque. They claim they was married the last time he was
back there, an' he brought her here. I wun't work with her. I wun't
demean myself into a black slave--. But tell me, Jake," coming over and
sitting by me, "how you're gittin' along. Off here we don't hear no news
from folks over to the Centre at all. We go to the new railroad, an'
never see any one from over there--."

"Exceptin' Magnus," said Ma Fewkes.

"You ain't married, yet, be you?" Rowena asked.

"I should say not! Me married!"

We sat then for quite a while without saying anything. Rowena sat
smoothing out a calico apron she had on. Finally she said: "Am I wearin'
anything you ever seen before, Jake?"

Looking her over carefully I saw nothing I could remember. I told her so
at last, and said she was dressed awful nice now and looked lots better
than I had ever seen her looking. My own rags were sorely on my mind
just then.

"This apern," said she, spreading it out for me to see, "is the back
breadth of that dress you give me back along the road. I'm goin' to keep
it always. I hain't goin' to wear it ever only when you come to see me!"

This was getting embarrassing; but her next remarks made it even more
so.

"How old be you, Jake?" she asked.

"I'll be twenty," said I, "the twenty-seventh day of next July."

"We're jest of an age," she ventured--and after a long pause, "I should
think it would be awful hard work to keep the house and do your work
ou'-doors."

I told her that it was, and spread the grief on very thick, thinking all
the time of the very precious way in which I hoped sometime to end my
loneliness, and give myself a house companion: in the very back of my
head even going over the plans I had made for an "upright" to the house,
with a bedroom, a spare room, a dining-room and a sitting-room in it.

"Well," said she, "for a smart, nice-lookin' young man, like you, it's
your own fault--"

5

And then there was a tap on the door. Rowena started, turned toward the
door, made