Such a garb was not, after all, incongruous with this original lady’s weather-beaten face. Her skin was tanned to a fine russet, showing tiny, radiating lines about the eyes when they twinkled with laughter, which was often. No individual feature was especially striking, but the general impression of her countenance was of animation and activity, mingled with geniality and with native shrewdness. “Howdy, Miz Yellett,” called out old Sally, hitching her rocker forward, in an excitement she could ill conceal. “You-uns’ gov’ment come, an’ she ain’t much bigger’n a lettle green gourd. Don’t seem to have drawed all the growth comin’ to her yit.” “In roundin’ up the p’ints of my gov’ment, Mis’ Rodney, you don’t want to forget that green gourds and green grapes is mighty apt to belong to the sour fambly, when they hangs beyant your reach.” “Ai-yi!” grimaced old Sally. “It’s tol’able far to send East for green fruit. We can take our own pep’mint.” The prospective advent of a governess in the Yellett family, moreover, one from that mysterious centre of culture, the East, had not only rent the neighborhood with bitter factions, but had submitted the Yelletts to the reproach of ostentation. In those days there were no schools in that portion of the Wind River country where the Yelletts grazed their flocks and herds. Parents anxious to obtain “educational advantages”—that was the term, irrespective of the age of the student or the school he attended—sent them, often, with parental blindness as to the equivocal nature of the blessing thus conferred, to visit friends in the neighboring towns while they “got their education.” Or they went uneducated, or they picked up such crumbs of knowledge as fell from the scant parental board. But never, up to the present moment, had any one flown into the face of neighborly precedent except sturdy Sarah Yellett. Old Sally, in her eagerness to convey that she was in no degree impressed with the pedagogical importation, like many another belligerent lost the first round of the battle through an excess of personal feeling. But though down, Sally was by no means out, and after a brief session with the snuff-brush she returned to the field prepared to maintain that the Yellett children, for all their pampering in the matter of having a governess imported for their benefit, were no better off than her own brood, who had taken the learning the gods provided. “Too bad, Miz Yellett, that you-uns had to hire that gov’ment without lookin’ over her p’ints. I’ve ben takin’ her in durin’ supper, and she’ll never be able to thrash ’em past Clem. She mought be able to thrash Clem if she got plumb mad, these yere slim wimmin is tarrible wiry ’n’ active at such times, but she’ll never be able to thrash beyant her.” And having injected the vitriolic drop in her neighbor’s cup of happiness, Old Sally struck a gait on her chair which was the equivalent of a gallop.