, and most women's hair
didn't.

She turned to him now, again, and said, "Is this your very first call in
Ashley? Because if it is, I mustn't miss the opportunity to cut in ahead
of all the other gossips, and give you a great deal of information. You
might just as well have it all in one piece now, and get it straight, as
take it in little snippets from old Mrs. Powers, when she comes to bring
your milk, this evening. You see I know that you are to get your milk of
the Powers, and that they have plucked up courage to ask you eight cents
a quart although the price around here has been, till now, six cents.
You'll be obliged to listen to a great many more details from Mrs.
Powers than from me, even those she knows nothing about. But of course
you must be introduced to the Powers, _in toto_ too. Old Mrs. Powers, a
very lively old widow, lives on her farm nearly at the foot of Deer
Hollow. Her married son and his family live with her. In this house,
there is first of all my husband. I'm so sorry he is away in Canada just
now, on lumbering business. He is Neale Crittenden, a Williams man, who
in his youth had thoughts of exploring the world but who has turned out
head of the 'Crittenden Manufacturing Company,' which is the
high-sounding name of a smallish wood-working business on the other side
of the field next our house. You can see the buildings and probably hear
the saws from your garden. Properly speaking, you know, you don't live
in Ashley but in 'Crittenden's' and your house constitutes one quarter
of all the residences in that settlement. There are yours, and ours, the
mill-buildings, the house where an old cousin of mine lives, and the
Powers' house, although that is so far away, nearly half a mile, that it
is really only a farm-house in the country. _We_, you see, are the
suburb of Ashley."

Marsh laughed out again at this, and she laughed with him, their eyes,
shining with amusement, meeting in a friendly glance.

"The mill is the most important member of Crittenden's, of course. Part
of the mill-building is pre-Revolutionary, and very picturesque. In the
life-time of my husband's uncle, it still ran by water-power with a
beautiful, enormous old mossy water-wheel. But since we took it over,
we've had to put in modern machinery very prosaically and run it on its
waste of slabs, mostly. All sorts of small, unimportant objects are
manufactured there, things you never heard of probably. Backs of
hair-brushes, woode