h her reflections about 'Gene. It was more than just
that he bothered her and put her back with her work. She really didn't
think it was just exactly nice and refined to be so crazy about anybody
as that. Well, there was a streak in the Powerses that wasn't refined.
'Gene's mother! gracious! When she got going, laughing and carrying-on,
what wouldn't she say, right out before anybody! And dancing still like
a young girl! And that hateful old Mrs. Hewitt, just after they'd moved
back to Ashley, didn't she have to go and tell her about 'Gene's being
born too soon after his father and mother were married? 'Gene took it
from his mother she supposed; he wa'an't to blame, really. But she hoped
Addie and Ralph would be _like_ her folks. Not but what the Powerses
were good-hearted enough. 'Gene was a good man, if he was queer, and an
awful good papa to Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene. None of her sisters
had got a man half so good. That sprigged dress would look good with
feather-stitching around the hem, too. Why hadn't she thought of that
before? She hadn't got enough mercerized thread in the house, she didn't
believe, to do it all; and it was such a nuisance to run out of the
thread you had to have, and nobody going to the village for goodness
knows when, with the farmwork behind the way it was, on account of the
rains.

She shifted her position and happened to bring one of her feet into
view. Without disturbing a single beat of the regular rhythm of the
dasher, she tilted her head to look at it with approbation. If there was
one thing she was particular about it was her shoes. She took such
comfort in having them nice. They could say what they pleased, folks
could, but high heels _suited_ her feet. Maybe some folks, that had
great broad feet like that old Indian Toucle, felt better in those
awful, sloppy old gunboats they called "Common-sense shoes," but _she_
didn't! It would make her sick to wear them! How they did look! Was
there anything so pretty, anyhow, as a fine-leather shoe with a nice
pointed toe, and a pretty, curved-in heel? It made you feel refined, and
as good as anybody, even if you had on a calico dress with it. That was
another nice thing about 'Gene, how he'd stand up for her about wearing
the kind of shoes she wanted. Let anybody start to pick on her about it,
if 'twas his own mother, he'd shut 'em up short, and say Nelly could
wear what she liked he guessed. Even when the doctor had said so strict
that