"Oh, I guess everybody is," agreed Fanny with that joyous, bubbling, luxurious note that Grandma knew so well. "I saw Mary Hagley polishing her very knuckles off on that second-hand stove Mert bought from that watery-eyed man from Spring Road who drives through here with the lame buckskin horse and pieced-out harness. Lutie Barlow's got her fall tinting and painting all done. She's painted the inside of her chicken coops a bright yellow, so's to fool her hens into thinking the sun's forever shining, and the inside of her stormshed a red, so's to make it seem warmer when she goes out there on a cold day to the coal and wood box. There ain't anybody can beat Lutie on color ideas. "Minnie Eton's dyed her heavy lace curtains in coffee and has a new set made for the dining room, besides having a picture of the third boy enlarged for the parlor. She started crocheting the lace for a new bedspread for her company bedroom yesterday. And--oh, my lands, I forgot to tell you the rest of that second-hand stove business. You see Mary was feeling pretty bad about having to put up with another old stove and envying Cissie Harvey hers. Cissie's new parlor stove is a monster, made seemingly of nothing but pure nickel and isinglass. Mary went over to look at it and when she come home and took another look at her old thing she just sat down and cried. She cried till she was too tired to care and then went to Jessup's for some stove polish. On the way she met Judy Parks who told her that Dick had a new kind of polish that gave a beautiful shine without hardly any work. So Mary got that and it proved to be all Judy said it was and in no time at all Mary turned that old stove of hers into a shining glory. And just as she was standing back admiring her work in comes Cissie, wringing her hands. The baby had poked out every last one of those isinglass windows while Cissie was in the kitchen warming up his milk. And there you are. And there's people that say there is no God and no justice in this world. "Josephine Rand's starting in on her rugs and begging rags from friends and enemies. She's going a little easy though since last week. She cut up what Ted says was a perfectly good pair of his pants. He had them hanging up in the basement and was hoping Josephine would wash and press them some day. He kept them down in the basement because he knew that if he left them in his closet she'd give them away to a hobo on account of her always feeling so sorry for tramps and believing everything they tell her. Ted says he always liked these particular pants on account of them making him look slim and being made of the same kind of cloth as his first long pair of pants that he got as a boy. So he was cherishing them and Josephine goes and cuts them into tatters. He's so mad, she says she don't dare leave a rag rug in his sight.