"Well, they will both hear from me," said Mrs. Boyd, "and in a way that they won’t forget soon. I tell you, Mary Waycroft, this thing has reached a climax. That burning bench is going to be my war-torch. They say I’ve been at strife with my neighbors all along; well, they’ll see now. I struggled and struggled with pride to get up to the point of going to church again, and that’s the reception I got." "It’s a pity to entertain hard feelings, but I don’t blame you a single bit," said Mrs. Waycroft, sympathetically. "As I look at it, you have done all you can to live in harmony, and they simply won’t have it. They might be different if it wasn’t for that meddlesome old Jane Hemingway. She keeps them stirred up. She and her daughter is half starving to death, while you—" Mrs. Waycroft glanced round the room at the warm rag carpet of many colors, at the neat fire-screen made of newspaper pictures pasted on a crude frame of wood, and, higher, to the mantel-piece, whose sole ornament was a Seth Thomas clock, with the Tower of London in glaring colors on the glass door—"while you don’t ask anybody any odds. Instead of starving, gold dollars seem to roll up to your door of their own accord and fall in a heap. They tell me even that cotton factory which you invested in, and which Mrs. Hemingway said had busted and gone up the spout, is really doing well." "The stock has doubled in value," said Mrs. Boyd, simply. "I don’t know how to account for my making money. I reckon it’s simply good judgment and a habit of throwing nothing away. The factory got to a pretty low ebb, and the people lost faith in it, and were offering their stock at half-price. My judgment told me it would pull through as soon as times improved, and I bought an interest in it at a low figure. I was right; it proved to be a fine investment." "I was sorter sorry for Virginia Hemingway, Sunday," said Mrs. Waycroft. "When her mother was making such an exhibition of herself in gloating over the way you was treated, the poor girl looked like she was ashamed, and pulled Jane’s apron like she was trying to keep her quiet. I reckon you hain’t got nothing against the girl, Ann?" "Nothing except that she is that devilish woman’s offspring," said Mrs. Boyd. "It’s hard to dislike her; she’s pretty—by all odds the prettiest and sweetest-looking young woman in this county. Her mother in her prime never saw the day she was anything like her. They say Virginia isn’t much of a hand to gossip and abuse folks. I reckon her mother’s ways have disgusted her."