"She's like old Mis' Pepper. Seliny Hazlitt went
over there, when she was fust married an' come to the neighborhood, an'
asked her if she'd got a sieve to put squash through. Poor Seliny! she
didn't know a sieve from a colander, in them days."

"I guess she found out soon enough," volunteered Mrs. Page. "_He_ was
one o' them kind o' men that can keep house as well as a woman. I'd
ruther live with a born fool."

"Well, old Mis' Pepper she ris up an' smoothed down her apron (recollect
them little dots she used to wear?--made her look as broad as a barn
door!), an' she says, 'Yes, we've got a sieve for flour, an' a sieve for
meal, an' a sieve for rye, an' a sieve for blue-monge, an' we could have
a sieve for squash if we was a mind to, _but I don't wish to lend_.'
That's the way with Tilly. She's terrible cropein' about news, but she
won't lend."

"How's your cistern?" asked Mrs. John Cole, who, with an exclusively
practical turn of mind, saw no reason why talk should be consecutive.
"Got all the water you want?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Page; "that last rain filled it up higher'n it's been
sence November."

But Mrs. Ellison was not to be thrown off the track.

"Ain't there been consid'able talk over here about Parson Bond?" she
asked.

Miss Sally Ware, a plump and pleasing maiden lady, whose gold beads lay
in a crease especially designed for them, stirred uneasily in her seat
and gave her sisters an appealing glance. But she did not speak, beyond
uttering a little dissentient noise in her throat. She was loyal to her
minister. An embarrassed silence fell like a vapor over the assemblage.
Everybody longed to talk; nobody wanted the responsibility of beginning.
Mrs. Page was the first to gather her forces.

"Now, Tilly," said she, with decision, "you ain't comin' over here to
tole us into haulin' our own pastor over the coals, unless you'll say
right out you won't pass it on to Saltash folks. As for puttin' it in
the paper, it ain't the kind you can."

Tilly's eyes burned.

"I guess I know when to speak an' when not to," she remarked. "Now don't
beat about the bush; the men-folks'll be back to-rights. I never in my
life give Len a mite o' news he couldn't ha' picked up for himself."

"Well, some master silly pieces have got into the paper, fust an' last,"
said Mrs. Robbins. "Recollect how your Len come 'way over here to git
his shoes cobbled, the week arter Tom Brewer moved int' the Holler, an'
folks hadn't got over