“One less wouldn’t be no improve_mint_ ter we-uns, Lethe,” said the daughter-in-law. “We air jes’ like a hen settin’ on forty aigs: she kin kiver ’em ez well ez thirty-nine.” “But I ain’t got no medjure o’ patience with this latter-day foolishness!” said Mrs. Sayles, tartly. “Whenst I war young, gals married thar fust chance,—mought hev been afeard they’d never git another,” she added, impersonally, that others might profit by this contingency. “An’ I don’t keer much nohow fur these hyar lonesome single wimmen. Ye never kin git folks ter b’lieve ez they ever _hed_ enny chance.” “Laws-a-massy, Lethe,” the daughter-in-law reassured her, still vaguely serene, “I ain’t wantin’ ter git shet o’ ye, nohow. Ye hev tuk mo’ keer o’ my chill’n than I hev, an’ holped me powerful. It’s well ye done it, too, fur Jacob Jessup ain’t sech ez kin content me with Wild-Cat Hollow. I war raised in the cove!” “Thar’s L’onidas now, axin’ fur suthin’ ter eat,” said the uncompromising Alethea, whose voice was the slogan of duty. The loom occupied a full third of the space on the little porch; two or three rickety chairs stood there, besides; a yoke hung against the wall; the spinning-wheel was shadowed by the jack-bean vines, whose delicate lilac blooms embellished the little cabin, clambering to its roof; on the floor were several splint baskets. A man was languidly filling them with peaches, which he brought in a wheel-barrow from the trees farther down on the slope. He was tall and stalwart, but his beard was gray, and he had assumed the manner and all the exemptions of extreme age; occasionally he did a little job like this with an air of laborious precision. He was accompanied both in going and coming by his step-son’s daughter, a tow-headed, six-year-old girl, and a gaunt yellow dog. The little girl’s voice, dictatorial and shrill, was on the air continuously, broken only by the low, acquiescent refrain of the old man’s replies, carefully adjusted to meet her propositions. The dog paced silently and discreetly along, his appreciation of the placid pleasure of the occasion plainly manifested in his quiet demeanor and his slightly wagging tail. His decorum suffered a lapse when, as they came close to the porch, he observed Leonidas issue from the door,—a small boy of four, a plump little caricature of a man, in blue cotton trousers, an unbleached cotton shirt, and a laughably small pair of knitted suspenders. He held in his hand a piece of fat meat several inches square, considered in the mountains peculiarly wholesome for small boys, and a reliable assistant in “gittin’ yer growth.”