arked Matlack.

"That's jest it," said she, "and so I ain't sorry you come along, Phil,
so's I can tell you some things I've found out about myself. One of them
is that I like to lie flat on my back and look up at the leaves of the
trees and think about them."

"What do you think?" asked Matlack.

"I don't think nothin'," said she. "Just as soon as I begin to look at
them wrigglin' in the wind, and I am beginnin' to wonder what it is I
think about them, I go slam bang to sleep, and when I wake up and try to
think again what it is I think, off I go again. But I like it. If I don't
know what it is I think, I ought to know that I don't know it. That's what
I call bein' really and truly a hermick."

"What else did you find out?" inquired Matlack.

"I found out," she answered, with animation, "that I admire to read
anecdotes. I didn't know I cared a pin for anecdotes until I took to
hermickin'. Now here's this paper; it came 'round the cheese, and it's got
a good many anecdotes scattered about in it. Let me read one of them to
you. It's about a man who made his will and afterwards was a-drivin' a
horse along a road, and the horse got skeered and ran over his executor,
who was takin' a walk. Then he sung out, 'Oh, bless my soul!' says he. But
I'll read you the rest if I can find it."

"Never mind about the anecdote," said Matlack, who knew very well that it
would take Mrs. Perkenpine half an hour to spell out twenty lines in a
newspaper. "What I want to know is if you found out anything about
yourself that's likely to give you a boost in the direction of that
cookin'-stove of yourn."

Mrs. Perkenpine was a woman whose remarks did not depend upon the remarks
of others. "Phil Matlack," said she, gazing fixedly at his pipe, "if I had
a man I'd let him smoke just as much as he pleased and just where he
pleased. He could smoke afore he got up, and he could smoke at his meals,
and he could smoke after he went to bed, and, if he fancied that sort of
thing, he could smoke at family prayers; it wouldn't make no difference to
me, and I wouldn't say a word to him agin' it. If that was his
individdlety, I'd say viddle."

"And how about everything else?" asked Matlack. "Would you tell him to
cook his own victuals and mend his clothes accordin' to his own nater?"

"No, sir," said she, striking with her expansive hand the newspaper in her
lap--"no, sir. I'd get up early in the mornin', and cook and wash and bake
and scour. I'd ski