Then at last Anne rose up with almost a stamp of impatience, and folding her hands before her, looked the questioner straight in the face, saying: “Mrs. Carr, I’m disappointed in you, you are just as pernickerty as you can be, and stingy beside. Perhaps you don’t know what ‘pernickerty’ means, because it’s one of Baldy’s words for being show-off particular, like the woman father tells about, who was always so dreadfully good. When she went to heaven they gave her an extra beautiful gold crown to wear, with a soft lining, so that it couldn’t hurt, but she took it off and looked it all over, and said, ‘I can do with a cheaper one; beside, linings are heating!’ And you are stingy because you won’t let any of us have the pleasure of thinking we are making you comfortable;” so saying, Anne, with a red spot in the middle of each cheek, walked out of the cottage, mounted Fox, and rode away, without looking behind her. Miss Jule, who a few moments later drew up from the opposite direction expecting to meet Mr. Hugh and advise with him about the new scheme, was astonished to find that Anne had gone, and to see Mrs. Carr crouching in her arm-chair with her face in her apron. Making no attempt to hide the fact that she had been crying, the old lady straightened herself, and said in a trembling voice: “Ye’ll be havin’ no more contrairy times with me, yerself and Master Hughie, for the little lassie hit out straight and fetched me between the eyes like the minister in the kirk used, and I see my error, that is, I like shall when I’m through blinkin’. Pride is a good life-buoy when a body’s drownin’ in the waters o’ trouble, but inconvenient and unseemly to wear juist for ornament on dry land.” Miss Jule asked no questions at the time, but the truth leaked out, and Mrs. Carr herself was the first to tell the story, laughing as she did so, with the dry, harsh laugh that needed use to mellow it, and illustrating with her crutch the emphatic sound of Anne’s boots, as she walked out. The result of this change of heart, or rather of manner, for at heart the old woman had always been good as gold, was that even when picnic days were over, and the good folks of Dogtown left the fields for the fireside, and children returned to school, Robin Hood’s Inn, remote as it was, became a meeting-place for autumn walks, and Saturday parties out to gather leaves or nuts. Moreover, few people could decide which attracted them the most, the tea and seedcakes, the courtesy of Laddie the old collie, Jill’s coaxing antics, or Mrs. Carr’s fine hospitality. “Herb Witch you shall still be called, for no one brews tea like you,” said Mr. Hugh, one afternoon as he sat by the wide fireplace, holding one of the precious Lowestoft cups that had been filled the second time. Mrs. Carr, for some unknown reason, never served anyone but him she termed her “landlord,” and Miss Letty from these cups.