pinned here and there about
her person; and as he watched her nimble fingers fly from one seam to
another the gentleman's amazement found expression.

"How can you manage to drive and sew at the same time? And is it
necessary?"

"I guess you're a Yankee yourself, aren't you? Well, if I hadn't
been able to manage how do you s'pose I'd ever have got my quilt done
in time for the State fair? Fifty-five thousand five hundred and fifty
pieces there's in it, and I've willed it to Jessica Trent when I'm
done exhibitin' it. None of 'em bigger 'n a finger nail, and all done
over paper. That's a piece of work, I 'low. What's your complaint?"

"I--I don't know as I have any. They've made me very comfortable and
welcome."

"Dare say. They couldn't do otherwise. Giddap there, Balaam. Rosetty
smells alfalfa, and you'll have to step out to keep up with a cow 'at
does that. I mean what's your disease?"

"Oh! well--it's of no consequence."

"Man alive, don't neglect yourself. You're yallar. You've got the
janders. Sure's I'm a living woman that's what it is."

"I think not. I hope not," said the poor man, but rather feebly.

"Sure. Or shingles. I've never seen a real likely case of shingles, and
if it _should_ be that, I'd just admire to nurse you. What victuals you
been eating?"

The dyspeptic winced. This sounded truly professional, for all his
numerous physicians had prefaced their treatment by a similar question.

"I've been able to eat almost anything and everything since I came
into this country of open-air living. The last thing was some of Elsa
Winkler's swiebach and honey-sweetened coffee."

"You don't say! Oh! oh! Poison, sir, rank poison. You may as well count
yourself dead and laid out----"

The unfortunate stranger shivered and turned pale. For some half hour
past, he had been suffering various qualms which he had attributed to
Elsa's hospitality, but to tell a nervous invalid that he has been
poisoned is to increase his misery a hundredfold. If Aunt Sally had
desired a patient she was now in a fair way to secure one; but her
words were without any significance to herself beyond the fact that
she favored neither Elsa nor her cookery. Elsa's knitting work had
crowded her own patchwork pretty closely at that famous fair, and the
handsome money prize, which she felt belonged of rights to herself,
had been halved between the pair. Because, though their skill lay
along different lines, they had both signed their