tions to call
again, bade her a cordial good-by, and ran out to the wagon, carrying
her purchase neatly done up in brown paper.

"Stiddy thar!" said the farmer, making room for her on the seat beside
him. "Look out for the ile-can, Huldy! Bought out the hull shop, hev ye?
Wal, I sh'll look for gret things the next few days. Huddup thar,
Nancy!" And they went jingling back along the street again.

As they passed the queer little shops, with their antiquated signboards,
the farmer had something to say about each one. How Omnium Grabb here,
the grocer, missed his dried apples one morning, and how he accused his
chore-boy, who was his sister's son too, of having eaten them,--"As if
any livin' boy would pick out dried apples to eat, when he hed a hull
store to choose from!" and how the very next day a man coming to buy a
pair of boots, Omnium Grabb hooked down a pair from the ceiling, where
all the boots hung, and found them "chock full" of dried apples, which
the rats had been busily storing in them and their companion pairs.

How Enoch Pillsbury, the "'pottecary, like t' ha' killed" Old Man Grout,
sending him writing fluid instead of the dark mixture for his
"dyspepsy."

How Beulah Perkins, who lived over the dry-goods store, had been
bedridden for nineteen years, till the house where she was living caught
fire, "whereupon she jumped out o' bed an' grabbed an umbrella an'
opened it, an' ran down street in her red-flannel gownd, with the
umbrella over her head, shoutin', 'Somebody go save my bedstid! I ain't
stirred from it for nineteen years, an' I ain't never goin' to stir from
it agin. Somebody go save my bedstid!'"

"And was it saved?" asked Hilda, laughing.

"No," said the farmer; "'t wa'n't wuth savin', nohow. Besides, if't
_hed_ been, she'd ha' gone back to it an' stayed there. Hosy Grout, who
did her chores, kicked it into the fire; an' she was a well woman to the
day of her death."

Now the houses straggled farther and farther apart, and at last the
village was fairly left behind. Old Nancy pricked up her ears and
quickened her pace a little, looking right and left with glances of
pleasure as the familiar fields ranged themselves along either side of
the road. Hilda too was glad to be in the free country again, and she
looked with delight at the banks of fern, the stone walls covered with
white starry clematis, and the tangle of blackberry vines which made the
pleasant road so fragrant and sweet. She was si