Now she
whimpered. And so by ogling him, by blushing at him, by tittering at
him, by giggling at him, by snickering at him, by simpering at him, by
making herself tenfold more a fool even than nature had made her, she
managed to convey to the dismayed soul of the young teacher the
frightful intelligence that he was loved by the richest, the ugliest,
the silliest, the coarsest, and the most entirely contemptible girl in
Flat Creek district.

Ralph sat by the fire the next morning trying to read a few minutes
before school-time, while the boys were doing the chores and the bound
girl was milking the cows, with no one in the room but the old woman.
She was generally as silent as Bud, but now she seemed for some
unaccountable reason disposed to talk. She had sat down on the broad
hearth to have her usual morning smoke; the poplar table, adorned by no
cloth, stood in the middle of the floor; the unwashed blue teacups sat
in the unwashed blue saucers; the unwashed blue plates kept company with
the begrimed blue pitcher. The dirty skillets by the fire were kept in
countenance by the dirtier pots, and the ashes were drifted and strewn
over the hearth-stones in a most picturesque way.

"You see," said the old woman, knocking the residuum from her cob pipe,
and chafing some dry leaf between her withered hands preparatory to
filling it again, "you see, Mr. Hartsook, my ole man's purty well along
in the world. He's got a right smart lot of this world's plunder[11],
one way and another." And while she stuffed the tobacco into her pipe
Ralph wondered why she should mention it to him. "You see, we moved in
here nigh upon twenty-five years ago. 'Twas when my Jack, him as died
afore Bud was born, was a baby. Bud'll be twenty-one the fif' of next
June."

Here Mrs. Means stopped to rake a live coal out of the fire with her
skinny finger, and then to carry it in her skinny palm to the bowl--or
to the _hole_--of her cob pipe. When she got the smoke a-going, she
proceeded:

"You see, this yere bottom land was all Congress land[12] in them there
days, and it sold for a dollar and a quarter, and I says to my ole man,
'Jack,' says I, 'Jack, do you git a plenty while you're a-gittin'. Git a
plenty while you're a-gittin',' says I, 'fer 'twon't never be no
cheaper'n 'tis now,' and it ha'n't been; I knowed 'twouldn't," and Mrs.
Means took the pipe from her mouth to indulge in a good chuckle at the
thought of her financial shrewdness. "'Git a