She flushed scarlet under the shade of her brown sunbonnet, not with anger, but with shame: she was ashamed for Mrs. Timson. She hardly felt the affront to herself at first; the flout at the proprieties in the abstract nullified for the moment all personal consideration. She was not conscious of a retrograde movement, for her instinct was to terminate the interview. She found herself murmuring, "It's jes' ez well,--jes' ez well," in an apologetic cadence which would have befitted Mrs. Timson's voice, and moving backward continuously, in her eager haste to be gone. Rather than prolong the ordeal for a moment she could with philosophy have beheld every hen that had ever owned the Tems sway in the grotesque catastrophe of patiently seeking to hatch apples. But Henrietta Timson had hardly anticipated routing the invader so promptly. Noting Julia's eagerness to be gone, she perversely thwarted it by stepping briskly down out of the door, remembering to put her hand to her side, with a suffering look and an affected limp. "I 'lowed ez I hed _hed_ tribulation, but I never seen none sech ez now. Sist' Lar'bee gone,--tuck one o' my chil'n with her!" She shook her head with a dolorous accusation that might have become her if "Sist' Lar'bee" had been a kidnapper, and if the hero of the rickets had gone for aught but to insure being properly fed and provided for. "Jasper Lar'bee's disappeared; an' old man Haight I do b'lieve hev gone deranged,--sets an' cusses the Lost Time mine all day; an' Jerushy's husband's drunk,--'pears like a rat-hole, ye can't fill him up; an'--hev ye seen Jasper Lar'bee down yer ways?" "Not fur a long time," faltered Julia, still retreating a few steps at intervals down the rocky, ledgy dooryard. "Waal, I'll tell him ez ye war hyar, an' 'lowed it 'peared like a long time sence ye seen him," said Mrs. Timson perversely, with the air of taking a message. "An'"--her small eyes narrowed--"ef I find enny tur-r-key aigs, I'll let ye know." She looked with a sour smile after the girl's light figure, for Julia was now fairly routed. "I'll let ye know, too," she muttered, "ez we ain't got none o' Mis' Lar'bee's slack-twisted ways hyar now,--givin' away a settin' of tur-r-key aigs, I say! Ef I find enny tur-r-key aigs, I'll send 'em down ter the store ter trade. I be mos' out o' snuff now."