, I thought I couldn't stand it. I never wanted
anything as I wanted that fish, and I never hated anything as I hated
that sheep. It wasn't the sheep's fault either; Leon teased it on
purpose, just to see it chase Polly Martin; but that was more her
doings than his.

She was a widow and she crossed our front meadow going to her sister's.
She had two boys big as Laddie, and three girls, and father said they
lived like "the lilies of the field; they toiled not, neither did they
spin." They never looked really hungry or freezing, but they never
plowed, or planted, they had no cattle or pigs or chickens, only a
little corn for meal, and some cabbage, and wild things they shot for
meat, and coons to trade the skins for more powder and lead--bet they
ate the coons--never any new clothes, never clean, they or their house.
Once when father and mother were driving past, they saw Polly at the
well and they stopped for politeness sake to ask how she was, like they
always did with every one. Polly had a tin cup of water and was
sopping at her neck with a carpet rag, and when mother asked, "How are
you, Mrs. Martin?" she answered: "Oh I ain't very well this spring; I
gest I got the go-backs!"

Mother said Polly looked as if she'd been born with the "go-backs," and
had given them to all her children, her home, garden, fields, and even
the FENCES. We hadn't a particle of patience with such people. When
you are lazy like that it is very probable that you'll live to see the
day when your children will peep through the fence cracks and cry for
bread. I have seen those Martin children come mighty near doing it
when the rest of us opened our dinner baskets at school; and if mother
hadn't always put in enough so that we could divide, I bet they would.
If Polly Martin had walked up as if she were alive, and had been washed
and neat, and going somewhere to do some one good, Leon never would
have dreamed of such a thing as training the Shropshire to bunt her.
She was so long and skinny, always wore a ragged shawl over her head, a
floppy old dress that the wind whipped out behind, and when she came to
the creek, she sat astride the foot log, and hunched along with her
hands; that tickled the boys so, Leon began teasing the sheep on
purpose to make it get her. But inasmuch as she saw fit to go abroad
looking so funny, that any one could see she'd be a perfect circus if
she were chased, I didn't feel that it was Leon's fault. If, like