one of those persons who seem never to
absorb any helpful ideas. Her forte was mostly criticism. She could
see the faults of her home town, and her home people, in comparison
with the Hub; but she had never, thus far, led in any benefit to
Poketown.

"You can't none of you understand how glad I am to git to my daughter
Mabel's in the winter; and then how glad I am to shake the mud of
Boston off my gaiters when it comes spring," declared the traveled
lady, who had a shrill voice of great "carrying" quality. When Mrs.
Marvin Petrie was talking there was little other conversation at the
sewing circle. Her comments upon people she had met and things she had
seen, were in the line of a monologue.

"I do sartainly grow tired of Poketown when it comes fall, and things
is dead, and the wind gets cold, and all. I'm sartain sure glad to git
shet of it!" she pursued on this particular afternoon. "And then the
first sight of Boston--and the mud--and the Common and Public
Library,--and the shops, and all, make me feel like I was livin' again.

"Mabel says to me: 'How kin you live, Maw, most all the year in
Poketown! Why, I was so glad to git away from it, that I'd walk the
streets and beg before I'd go back to it again!' An' she would;
Mabel's lively yet, if she has been married ten years and got three
children.

"But by this time o' year--arter bein' three months or more in the
hurly-burly of Boston, I'm _de_-lighted to git into the country. Ye
see, city folks keep dancin' about so. They're always on the go. They
ain't no rest for a body."

"But you ain't got ter go because other folks dooes, Miz' Petrie,"
suggested old lady Scattergood. "Now, when I go ter see my son-in-law
at Skunk's Holler, I jest sit down an' fold my hands, an' _rest_."

"Skunk's Holler!" murmured one of the other women. "To hear Miz'
Scattergood talk, one 'ud think she was traveled, too. An' she ain't
never been out o' sight o' this lake, I do believe."

"If ye don't go yourself, you feel's though you had," said Mrs. Petrie,
with good nature. "So much bustle around you--yes. An' so I tell my
daughters. I git enough of it b'fore spring begins."

"But," said the minister's wife, timidly, "after all, there isn't so
much difference between Poketown and Boston, excepting that Boston is
so very much bigger. People are about the same everywhere. And one
house is like another, only one's bigger----"

"Now, that's right foolish talk, Miz'