“An’ sheep,” put in an unexpected voice. A dawdling young woman, with a shallow blue eye and a pretty, inane soft face, had stepped into the back door, and heard the last words of the monologue which apparently had been often enough repeated to admit of no doubt as to its tenor. She had a slatternly, ill-adjusted look, and a snuff-brush in the corner of her mouth. “An’ herds cattle in the summer season,” said Mrs. Sayles. “He hev a good name ’mongst the cattle-owners,” observed the young woman, her daughter-in-law. “An’ hev bought him right smart land,” added Mrs. Sayles. “Down in Piomingo Cove! not h’isted up on the side o’ the mounting, like we-uns!” exclaimed the young woman, with more enthusiasm than one would have believed possible from the flaccid indifference of her manner. “An’ he put in all the fair weather las’ winter a-raisin’ him a house,” Mrs. Sayles pursued. “An’ he ’lowed ter me ez every log war hefted, an’ every pat o’ clay war daubed on the chinkin’, with the thought o’ Lethe!” cried the other. “He hev been plantin’ round thar some, a’ready,” said the old woman. “Corn, pumpkins, wheat, an’ terbacco,” supplemented the daughter-in-law. “An’ he hev got him some bee-gums,—I never hearn how many bees,” said Mrs. Sayles. “Down in Piomingo Cove!” the climax of worldly prosperity. “Laws-a-massy!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles, with a freshened realization of despair. “Lethe ain’t never goin’ ter live in that house! I dunno what ails the gal! She takes a notion ez she likes a man with sech ways ez she can’t abide, an’ she quar’ls with him mornin’ an’ evenin’. An’ then when a feller kems along, with all sort’n good ways ez she likes, she don’t like _him_! Gals never acted similar whenst I war young. I ’low it mus’ be the wiles o’ Satan on the onruly generation.” “Lethe ’pears ter think the Lord hev app’inted the rocky way,” said the other. “She be always a-doin’ of what’s the hardest. An’ she can’t quit nowhar this side o’ nuthin’! Ef ever she’s condemned ter Torment she’ll kerry a leetle kindlin’ along, fur fear the fire won’t be het up hot enough ter burn her fur her sins.” She was silent during a momentary activity of the snuff-brush. “But ef _I_ war you-uns, Lethe, an’ hed the chance o’ livin’ in my own house all ter myself”—she began anew. “Plenty o’ elbow-room,” interrupted Mrs. Sayles; “not all jammed tergether, like we-uns hyar.” Alethea, aware of her lack of logic, made an effort to effect a diversion. “I never hearn o’ folks a-grudgin’ a gal house-room, an’ wantin’ her ter go off an’ marry fur a place ter bide,” she said, pausing in her weaving. Mrs. Sayles, who piqued herself, not without some reason, on her kindness to her step-daughter, having her prosaic welfare, at least, at heart, retorted in righteous wrath. “An’ nobody ain’t never said no sech word,” she declared, with amplest negation. “Grudgin’ ye house-room,—shucks!”