and ironed; when
she said, looking toward a faint light in the west, and as though the
thought had just occurred to her, "It's going to break away, I see.
Don't you think, mother, I had better just run over to Mrs. Walker's,
and milk her cow for her?"

"Go to Miss Walker's!" repeated the mother, as though she were as much
outraged as astonished. She was seated in the door, patching, by the
waning light, an old pair of mud-spattered trousers, her own dress being
very old-fashioned, coarse, and scanty,--so scant, in fact, as to reveal
the angles of her form with ungraceful definiteness, especially the
knees, that were almost suggestive of a skeleton, and now, as she put
herself in position, as it were, stood up with inordinate prominence.
Her hands were big in the joints, ragged in the nails, and marred all
over with the cuts, burns, and scratches of indiscriminate and incessant
toil. But her face was, perhaps, the most sadly divested of all womanly
charm. It had, in the first place, the deep yellow, lifeless appearance
of an old bruise, and was expressive of pain, irritation, and fanatical
anxiety.

"Go to Miss Walker's!" she said again, seeing that Jenny was taking down
from its peg in the kitchen-wall a woollen cloak that had been hers
since she was a little girl, and her mother's before her.

"Yes, mother. You know John Walker is very sick, and Mrs. Walker has
been sent for over there. She's very down-hearted about him. He's
dangerous, they think; and I thought may be I'd come round that way as I
come home, and ask how he was. Don't you think I'd better?"

"I think you had better stay at home and tend to your own business.
You'll spile your clothes, and do no good that I can see by traipsin'
out in such a storm."

"Why, you would think it was bad for one of our cows to go without
milking," Jenny said, "and I suppose Mrs. Walker's cow is a good deal
like ours, and she is giving a pailful of milk now."

"How do you know so much about Miss Walker's cow? If you paid more
attention to things at home, and less to other folks, you'd be more
dutiful."

"That's true, mother, but would I be any better?"

"Not in your own eyes, child; but you're so much wiser than your father
and me, that words are throwed away on you."

"I promised Mrs. Walker that I would milk for her to-night," Jenny
said, hesitating, and dropping her eyes.

"O yes, you've always got some excuse! What did you make a promise for,
that you knowed