that all the earth yields!
Variety without end."

There was a patchwork of fields bordered with gray stone walls, of stray
bits of pasture, of fallow meadow and glint of running water, of
woodland, orchard, and the habitations of man made still by distance.

Aunt Jed's house was not on the highway. The highway was miles off, and
cut the far side of the basin in a long, straight slant. On that gash of
white one could see occasional tiny motor-cars hurrying up and down like
toys on a taut string. Only one motor, a pioneer car, had struggled up
the road that led past Natalie's door, and immediately after, that
detour had been marked as impassable on all the best maps.

In fact, the road up to Aunt Jed's looked more like a river-bed than a
road. It had a gully and many "thank-you-ma'ams." It was plentifully
sown with pebbles as big as your head and hard as flint, which gave tit
for tat to every wheel that struck them. Every time Mrs. Leighton
ventured in Natalie's cart--and it was seldom indeed except to go to
church--she would say, "We really must have this road fixed."

But Natalie would only laugh and say,

"Not a bit of it. I like it that way."

Natalie had bought for a song a little mare named Gipsy. Nobody, man or
woman, could drive Gip; she just went. Whoever rode, held on and prayed
for her to stop. Gip hated that road down into the valley. If she could
have gone from top to bottom in one jump, she would have done it. As it
was, she did the next best thing. What made you love Gip was that she
came up the hill almost as fast as she went down.

Soon after Gip became Natalie's, she awoke to find herself famous from
an attempt to pass over and through a stalled motor-car. After that the
farmers used to keep an eye out for her, especially on Sundays, and give
her the whole road when they saw her coming. Ann Leighton said it was
undignified to go to church like that, to which Natalie replied:

"Think what it's doing for your color, Mother. Besides, think of church.
You must admit that church here has gone a bit tough. I really couldn't
stand it except sandwiched between two slices of Gip."

Aunt Jed's house--nobody ever called it anything else--was typical of
the old New England style, except that a broad veranda had been added to
the length of the front by the generation that had outraged custom and
reduced the best parlor and the front door to everyday uses. This must
have happened many years before Na