Mr. Frye arose, and walked toward the door, where Thomas was bidding Anna good-by. "See you to-night," Thomas whispered; "heh, Anna?" "Please yourself," said Anna. And off she went, without looking at Mr. Frye, who had come to speak to her. When she was gone, Mr. Frye gave his son a keen glance. In it was both curiosity and malice. But Thomas turned away. It seemed to him that women must have been easier to understand when his father was young. For no one could understand them now. While the storekeeper's back was turned, Mr. Crabbe rearranged the checkerboard. He took up two of Mr. Frye's men and put them in his pocket. Then he winked at Mr. Barly, as though to say: "I'm just a leetle too smart for him." Farmer Barly winked back. It amused him to have Mr. Frye beaten unfairly. Mr. Frye wanted to get his daughter away from him. "Well," he said in his mind, to Mr. Frye, "just go easy. Just go easy, Mr. Frye." And he winked again at Mr. Crabbe. "That's right," he said, "give it to him." When Mr. Jeminy left Anna, at the edge of the village, he went to call on Grandmother Ploughman. He found her in the company of old Mrs. Crabbe, who had brought her knitting over, for society's sake. Mrs. Ploughman received him with quiet dignity, due to a sense of the wrong she had suffered, for which she blamed Mrs. Wicket, and the Democratic Party. Mr. Ploughman, she often said, had been a good Republican all his life. Unfortunately, he was dead; otherwise, things would have been different. It seemed to her that the country was being run by a set of villains. "The world is in a bad way," she declared. "I don't know what we're coming to." And an expression of bleak satisfaction illuminated her face, wrinkled with age. "Yes," said Mr. Jeminy, "these are unhappy times. I am afraid we are leaving behind us a difficult task for those who follow. They had a right to expect better things of us, Mrs. Ploughman." "I've not left anything behind," said Mrs. Ploughman decidedly; "not yet." "I should hope not," ejaculated Mrs. Crabbe. "No." "It's the young," said Mrs. Ploughman, "who get the old into trouble. Nothing ever suits them until they're in mischief; and then it's up to their elders to pull them out again. I know, for I've seen it, father and son." "It is the old," said Mr. Jeminy, "who get the young into trouble." "Is it, indeed?" said Mrs. Ploughman. "Well, I don't believe it." And she gave Mr. Jeminy a bright, peaked look. "Then," she continued, "when you've done for them, year in and year out, off they go, and that's the end of it." "Ah, yes," croaked Mrs. Crabbe; "off they go." "If it isn't one thing," said Mrs. Ploughman, "it's another. Trouble and death--that's a woman's lot in this world, like the Good Book says." "Death is the end of everything," remarked Mrs. Crabbe.