"Mabel says to me: 'How kin you live, Maw, most all the year in Poketown! Why, I was so glad to git away from it, that I'd walk the streets and beg before I'd go back to it again!' An' she would; Mabel's lively yet, if she has been married ten years and got three children. "But by this time o' year--arter bein' three months or more in the hurly-burly of Boston, I'm _de_-lighted to git into the country. Ye see, city folks keep dancin' about so. They're always on the go. They ain't no rest for a body." "But you ain't got ter go because other folks dooes, Miz' Petrie," suggested old lady Scattergood. "Now, when I go ter see my son-in-law at Skunk's Holler, I jest sit down an' fold my hands, an' _rest_." "Skunk's Holler!" murmured one of the other women. "To hear Miz' Scattergood talk, one 'ud think she was traveled, too. An' she ain't never been out o' sight o' this lake, I do believe." "If ye don't go yourself, you feel's though you had," said Mrs. Petrie, with good nature. "So much bustle around you--yes. An' so I tell my daughters. I git enough of it b'fore spring begins." "But," said the minister's wife, timidly, "after all, there isn't so much difference between Poketown and Boston, excepting that Boston is so very much bigger. People are about the same everywhere. And one house is like another, only one's bigger----" "Now, that's right foolish talk, Miz' Middler!" exclaimed the lady so recently from the Hub. "The people's just as different as chalk is from cheese; and there ain't a church in Boston--and there's hundreds of 'em--that don't make our Union Church look silly." "But, Miz' Petrie," cried one inquiring body. "Just what is it that makes Boston so different from Poketown? After all, folks is folks--and houses is houses--and streets is streets. Ain't that so?" "Wa-al!" The traveled lady was stumped for a moment. Then she burst out with: "There! I'll tell ye. It's 'cause there's some order in the city; ev'rything here is haphazard. Course, there's poor sections--reg'lar _slums_, as they call 'em--in Boston. But the poor, dirty buildings and the poor, dirty streets, are in sort of a bunch together. They're in spots; they ain't dribbled all through the town, mixed up with fine houses, and elegant squares, and boulevards. Nope. Cities know how to hide their poor spots in some ways. Boston puts its best foot forward, as the sayin' is. "But take it right here in Poketown. Now, ain't the good and the bad all shoveled together? Take Colonel Pa'tridge's fine house on High Street, stuck in right between Miner's meat shop and old Bill Jones' drygoods an' groceries--an' I don't know which is the commonest lookin' of the two." "There you air right, Miz' Petrie," agreed the Widow Beasely. "Miner's got so dirty--around his shop I mean--that I hate to buy a piece of meat there." "But the other butcher ain't much better," cried another troubled housewife. "And the flies!" "Oh, the awful flies!" chorused several.