Mrs. Oakley's gaze was riveted upon an enterprising hornet that had started out from the crowd and was pursuing a separate investigation of the tomato juice on her hands. While she watched it, she swallowed hard as if her throat were too dry. "Miss Tabitha told me that her brother William went up as far as Washington on the train with Geneva. He's just back last week, and what do you reckon he said Geneva told him on the way up?" She broke off and aimed a fatal blow at the hornet. "What with wasps and bees and hornets and all the thousand and one things that bite and sting," she observed philosophically, "it's hard to understand how the Lord ever had time to think of a pest so small as a seed tick. Yet I believe I'd rather have all the other biting things together. I got some seed ticks on me when I went down to the old spring in the pasture yesterday, and they've been eating me up ever since." "They are always worse in a drought," Dorinda said, and she asked curiously: "What was it Geneva told Mr. William?" Mrs. Oakley swallowed again. "Of course I know there ain't a bit of truth in it," she said slowly, as if the words hurt her as she uttered them. "But William says Geneva told him she was engaged to marry Jason Greylock. She said he courted her in New York a year ago." Dorinda laughed. "Why, how absurd!" she exclaimed. "Miss Tabitha knows we are to be married in October. Hasn't she watched Miss Seena helping me with my sewing? I was spending the evening over there last week and we talked about my marriage. She knows there isn't a word of truth in it." "Oh, she knows. She said she reckoned Geneva must be crazy. There ain't any harm in it, but I thought maybe I'd better tell you." "I don't mind," replied Dorinda, and she laughed again, the exultant laugh of youth undefeated. "Ma," she asked suddenly, "did you ever want anything very much in your life?" Startled out of her stony resignation, Mrs. Oakley let fall the branch, and the spinning swarms descended like a veil over the apples. "I'll have to hang a piece of mosquito netting over these apples," she said. "There's some we used for curtains in the spare room. Well, I told you I'd kind of set my heart on your father," she added in a lifeless tone. "But there's one thing I can tell you, daughter, mighty few folks in this world ever get what they want." "Oh, I mean before you knew Pa, when you were a girl. Didn't you ever feel that there was only one thing in the world that could make you happy?"