an' she
ain't much bigger'n a lettle green gourd. Don't seem to have drawed all
the growth comin' to her yit."

"In roundin' up the p'ints of my gov'ment, Mis' Rodney, you don't want to
forget that green gourds and green grapes is mighty apt to belong to the
sour fambly, when they hangs beyant your reach."

"Ai-yi!" grimaced old Sally. "It's tol'able far to send East for green
fruit. We can take our own pep'mint."

The prospective advent of a governess in the Yellett family, moreover, one
from that mysterious centre of culture, the East, had not only rent the
neighborhood with bitter factions, but had submitted the Yelletts to the
reproach of ostentation. In those days there were no schools in that
portion of the Wind River country where the Yelletts grazed their flocks
and herds. Parents anxious to obtain "educational advantages"--that was the
term, irrespective of the age of the student or the school he
attended--sent them, often, with parental blindness as to the equivocal
nature of the blessing thus conferred, to visit friends in the neighboring
towns while they "got their education." Or they went uneducated, or they
picked up such crumbs of knowledge as fell from the scant parental board.
But never, up to the present moment, had any one flown into the face of
neighborly precedent except sturdy Sarah Yellett.

Old Sally, in her eagerness to convey that she was in no degree impressed
with the pedagogical importation, like many another belligerent lost the
first round of the battle through an excess of personal feeling. But
though down, Sally was by no means out, and after a brief session with the
snuff-brush she returned to the field prepared to maintain that the
Yellett children, for all their pampering in the matter of having a
governess imported for their benefit, were no better off than her own
brood, who had taken the learning the gods provided.

"Too bad, Miz Yellett, that you-uns had to hire that gov'ment without
lookin' over her p'ints. I've ben takin' her in durin' supper, and she'll
never be able to thrash 'em past Clem. She mought be able to thrash Clem
if she got plumb mad, these yere slim wimmin is tarrible wiry 'n' active
at such times, but she'll never be able to thrash beyant her." And having
injected the vitriolic drop in her neighbor's cup of happiness, Old Sally
struck a gait on her chair which was the equivalent of a gallop.

But Mrs. Yellett was not the sort of antagonist to be left gaping