"Yes, and looking for all the world like a comfortable pillow that has just been shaken up; but if there was a man under threescore in seeing distance, she'd be as trim as you please," replied Mistress Strudwick. "Heigh-ho, what a slipshod world this would be if there were nobody but women in it!" "And what a topsy-turvy place 'twould be with only men. Nobody'd ever know where anything was," said quiet Mistress Cheshire, with poignant recollections of striving to keep up with the belongings of two husbands. "Depend upon it, Martha Strudwick, the world would be a deal worse off without women than without men, for men never can find anything." "I am quite of your mind, Mary. In sooth, I always had a sneaking notion that Columbus brought his wife along when he came to discover America, and that 'twas she who first saw the land," said Sally Ruffin. "I don't seem to remember that there was a Mistress Columbus," said Ann Clevering, biting off her thread with a snap. "Well, goodness knows there had ought to have been, for Columbus had a son," replied Martha Strudwick, greatly scandalized, although her own knowledge in the matter was somewhat hazy. "How 'pon earth did we ever get to talking such wise things as history?" asked Mistress Cheshire, whose _forte_ was housewifely recipes. "We were saying as how men never could find things." "Oh, yes." "Well," said Martha Strudwick, thoughtfully, "that depends on what kind of things you mean. Now there's my husband--and he's a good man, good as common--he can find a fish-hook in the dark if it's good biting season; but he can't see the long-handled hoe in the broad daylight if it's weeding time in the garden and the sun is hot. Finding things depends more on a man's mind than his eyes." "Then there's a heap of them who lose their minds mighty handy," retorted Ann Clevering. Mistress Cheshire pushed back her chair: "I shall run home and caution Dilsy about putting the bread to rise; she's that unseeing that I think Providence must have first meant her to be a man." Which was as near a joke as anything Mistress Cheshire ever said. As she trotted away the others looked after her affectionately. "Mary is such a mild-mannered woman," said Ann Clevering; "many's the time I've heard her first husband--dead and gone these twenty-three years--say it was an accident little short of a miracle how Providence could make a woman with so little tongue." "Joscelyn, with her goings-on, must be a dreadful trial to her," sighed Amanda Bryce. "And not only to her mother, but to the whole town," snapped another woman. "Hoity-toity!" bristled Mistress Strudwick, "what's the matter with Joscelyn? She is the very life of the place, now that the men are gone. If 'twere not for discussing her, and abusing her,"--with a withering glance at the last speaker,--"we should go tongue-tied for lack of somewhat to talk about. She's a tonic for us all, and without her we'd be going to sleep."