"Of course it is," said Mrs. Green cheerfully. She sat down on an overturned bucket between the green rows of pease, and pushed back her sunbonnet from her kind, old wrinkled face. "I remember when yo' ma came here jest as well. She was jest the loveliest thing!--But of course all her own people were a good long way off, and she was a seafarer herself, and she couldn't somehow get used to the hills. I've heard her say they jest shut her in like a prison.... But then, after a while, you came, an' I reckon, though she says things sometimes, wherever you are she feels to be home. When it comes to being a woman, the good Lord has to get in com-pensation somewhere, or I don't reckon none of us could stand it.--I'm glad she's better." "_I'm_ glad," said Hagar. "Can I help you pick the pease, Mrs. Green?" "Thank you, child, but I've about picked the mess. You goin' to play on the ridge? I wish Thomasine and Maggie and Corker were here to play with you." "I wish they were," said Hagar. Her eyes filled. "It's a very lonesome day. Yesterday was lonesome and to-morrow's going to be lonesome--" "Haven't you got a good book? I never see such a child for books." Two tears came out of Hagar's eyes. "I was reading a book Aunt Serena told me not to read.--And now I'm not to read _anything_ for a whole week." "Sho!" exclaimed Mrs. Green. "What did you do that for? Don't you know that little girls ought to mind?" Hagar sighed. "Yes, I suppose they ought.... I wish I had now.... It's so lonesome not to read when your mother's sick and grandmother won't let me go into the room only just a little while morning and evening." "Haven't you got any pretty patchwork nor nothin'?" Hagar standing among the blush roses, looked at her with sombre eyes. "Mrs. Green, I hate to sew." "Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Green. "That's an awful thing to say!" She sat on the overturned bucket, between the pale-green, shiny-podded peavines, her friendly old face, knobbed and wrinkled like a Japanese carving, gleaming from between the faded blue slats of her sunbonnet, and she regarded the child before her with real concern. "I wonder now," she said, "if you're goin' to grow up a rebel? Look-a-here, honey, there ain't a mite of ease and comfort on that road." "That's what the Yankees called us all," said Hagar. 'Rebels.'" "Ah, I don't mean 'rebel' that-er-way," said Mrs. Green. "There's lonelier and deeper ways of rebellin'. You don't get killed with an army cheerin' you, and newspapers goin' into black, and a state full of people, that were 'rebels' too, keepin' your memory green,--what happens, happens just to you, by yourself without any company, and no wreaths of flowers and farewell speeches. They just open the door and put you out." "Out where?"