ked Mrs.
Rumford, now that quiet was restored, "If he don't come to-day, then
he'll come a Sunday; and if he don't come this Sunday, then he'll come
the next one, so what's the odds? You and him didn't have a fallin'
out last time he was home, did you?"

"Yes, if you must know it, we did."

"Haven't you got any common sense, Huldy? Sakes alive! I thought when
I married Daniel Rumford, if I could stand his temper it was nobody's
business but my own. I didn't foresee that he had so much he could
keep plenty for his own use, and then have a lot left to hand down to
his children, so 't I should have to live in the house with it to the
day of my death! Seems to me if I was a girl and lived in a village
where men-folks is as scarce as they be here, I'd be turrible careful
to keep holt of a beau after I'd got him. What in the name o' goodness
did you quarrel about?"

Huldah got up from the table and carried her plate and cup to the
sink. She looked out of the window to conceal her embarrassment, and
busied herself with preparations for the dish-washing, so that she
could talk with greater freedom.

"We've had words before this, plenty of times, but they didn't amount
to anything. Pitt's good, and he's handsome, and he's smart; but he's
awful dictatorial and fault-finding, and I just ain't goin' to eat too
much humble-pie before I'm married, for fear I won't have anything
else to eat afterwards, and it ain't very fattening for a steady diet.
And if there ever was a hateful old woman in the world it's his
stepmother. I've heard of her saying mean things about our family
every once in a while, but I wouldn't tell you for fear you'd flare up
and say Pitt couldn't come to see me. She's tried to set him against
me ever since we began to keep company together. She's never quite
managed to do it, but she's succeeded well enough to keep me in
continual trouble."

"What's she got to say?" inquired Mrs. Rumford hotly. "She never had a
silk dress in the world, till Eben Packard married her, and everybody
knows her father was a horse-doctor and mine was a reg'lar one!"

"She didn't say anything about fathers, but she did tell Almira Berry
that no member of the church in good standing could believe in signs
as you did and have hope of salvation. She said I was a chip off the
old block, and had been raised like a heathen. It seems when I was
over there on Sunday I refused to stand up and have my height measured
against the wall, and