take a house, with the little mite I’ve got by me.  I might keep house for us all, ‘stead o’ boardin’ round in other folks’ houses.  That I ain’t never been demeaned to, but I dare say I should find it pleasant in some ways.  Town folks has got the upper hand o’ country folks, but with all their work an’ pride they can’t make a dandelion.  I do’ know the times when I’ve set out to wash Monday mornin’s, an’ tied out the line betwixt the old pucker-pear tree and the corner o’ the barn, an’ thought, ’Here I be with the same kind o’ week’s work right over again.’  I’d wonder kind o’ f’erce if I couldn’t git out of it noways; an’ now here I be out of it, and an uprooteder creatur’ never stood on the airth.  Just as I got to feel I had somethin’ ahead come that spool-factory business.  There! you know he never was a forehanded man; his health was slim, and he got discouraged pretty nigh before ever he begun.  I hope he don’t know I’m turned out o’ the old place.  ’Is’iah’s well off; he’ll do the right thing by ye,’ says he.  But my!  I turned hot all over when I found out what I’d put my name to,—­me that had always be’n counted a smart woman!  I did undertake to read it over, but I couldn’t sense it.  I’ve told all the folks so when they laid it off on to me some:  but hand-writin’ is awful tedious readin’ and my head felt that day as if the works was gone.

“I ain’t goin’ to sag on to nobody,” she assured me eagerly, as the train rushed along.  “I’ve got more work in me now than folks expects at my age.  I may be consid’able use to Isabella.  She’s got a family, an’ I’ll take right holt in the kitchen or with the little gals.  She had four on ’em, last I heared.  Isabella was never one that liked house-work.  Little gals!  I do’ know now but what they must be about grown, time doos slip away so.  I expect I shall look outlandish to ‘em.  But there! everybody knows me to home, an’ nobody knows me to Shrewsbury; ‘twon’t make a mite o’ difference, if I take holt willin’.”

I hoped, as I looked at Mrs. Peet, that she would never be persuaded to cast off the gathered brown silk bonnet and the plain shawl that she had worn so many years; but Isabella might think it best to insist upon more modern fashions.  Mrs. Peet suggested, as if it were a matter of little consequence, that she had kept it in mind to buy some mourning; but there were other things to be thought of first, and so she had let it go until winter, any way, or until she should be fairly settled in Shrewsbury.

“Are your nieces expecting you by this train?” I was moved to ask, though with all the good soul’s ready talk and appealing manner I could hardly believe that she was going to Shrewsbury for more than a visit; it seemed as if she must return to the worn old farmhouse over by the sheep-lands.  She answered that one of the Barnes boys had written a letter for her the day before, and there was evidently little uneasiness about her first reception.