outh, but our
mother didn't like having it used to her. She said the "saucy chit"
was insulting. Then the man came, and he said he was very sorry, but
his wife would see no one. He did invite mother in, but she wouldn't
go. She told us she could see past him into the house and there was
such finery as never in all her days had she laid eyes on. She said he
was mannerly as could be, but he had the coldest, severest face she
ever saw.

They had two men and a woman servant, and no one could coax a word from
them, about why those people acted as they did. They said 'orse, and
'ouse, and Hengland. They talked so funny you couldn't have understood
them anyway. They never plowed or put in a crop. They made everything
into a meadow and had more horses, cattle, and sheep than a county
fair, and everything you ever knew with feathers, even peacocks. We
could hear them scream whenever it was going to rain. Father said they
sounded heathenish. I rather liked them. The man had stacks of money
or they couldn't have lived the way they did. He came to our house
twice on business: once to see about road laws, and again about tax
rates. Father was mightily pleased at first, because Mr. Pryor seemed
to have books, and to know everything, and father thought it would be
fine to be neighbours. But the minute Mr. Pryor finished business he
began to argue that every single thing father and mother believed was
wrong. He said right out in plain English that God was a myth. Father
told him pretty quickly that no man could say that in his house; so he
left suddenly and had not been back since, and father didn't want him
ever to come again.

Then their neighbours often saw the woman around the house and garden.
She looked and acted quite as well as any one, so probably she was not
half so sick as my mother, who had nursed three of us through typhoid
fever, and then had it herself when she was all tired out. She
wouldn't let a soul know she had a pain until she dropped over and
couldn't take another step, and father or Laddie carried her to bed.
But she went everywhere, saw all her friends, and did more good from
her bed than any other woman in our neighbourhood could on her feet.
So we thought mighty little of those Pryor people.

Every one said the girl was pretty. Then her clothes drove the other
women crazy. Some of our neighbourhood came from far down east, like
my mother. Our people back a little were from over the sea