Through the open, screened window, Mrs. Peckett inquired, with elephantine playfulness (physically, she was built on almost as heroic a scale as Martha herself), "Got any place for a tired little girl to rest?" "Sure we have," said Mrs. Slawson. "Come right along in!" Another moment, and Mrs. Peckett had obeyed. "Take that chair there, the one alongside the table, with the cushion in. It’s the comfortablest we got—just suits that holla in your back, that, Ma says, hers always needs restin’—an’ Ma’s a champeean on restin’. She knows how to do it in seven differnt languages. You’ll excuse my goin’ on with what I’m doin’? I can talk while I work." Mrs. Peckett lowered herself gradually into the proffered chair with the air of one accustomed to distrust the good intentions of furniture. "Certainly, I’ll excuse you. What you doing?" "Sewing," said Martha agreeably. "Sheeting?" Mrs. Peckett inquired. Martha considered. "Well, I s’pose you might _call_ it sheeting," she admitted. "Down home—I should say in New York City—we call it muslin, but up here it’s cotton-cloth. I’m trying to remember the differences. I don’t believe in lettin’ things go into one eye, an’ outa the other ear, so you never profit by your exper’ences. I believe in livin’ an’ learnin’, if you die in the attemp’." "This ain’t very fine quality," observed Mrs. Peckett, stooping and picking up an end of the material to examine it critically through her thick-lensed spectacles. Martha sighed. "Dear me! how sorry I am. But I never was much of a cornersewer, as Mrs. Sherman says, on white goods, an’ that’s a fack." "I’m afraid you won’t have much wear out of it," pronounced the oracle. "You’ll have to get new sheets in no time. These’ll go through before you know it. The next time you want to buy sheeting, or anything of that sort, you just come to me. I’ll advise you." "Thank you," said Martha. "I always heard tell, city folks wa’n’t much of any in the housekeeping line, and I suspicion it’s true. They’re too busy gallivanting the streets to look after their houses. For myself, I don’t mind telling _you_, I don’t set much store by city folks." "You don’t say!" "We get a good mess of ’em up here, summers. Rich and poor, and if we ’natives,’ as they call us, ain’t glad to see them go away every fall, I wouldn’t say so. _I don’t like ’em!_" "What’s your objection?" "Well, the rich ones are stuck up, and the poor ones are low down. You never saw such nuisances as those Fresh Air children! Several of our ladies take them in, every summer, for a spell, but _I_ wouldn’t have one of them in _my_ house, tracking mud and dirt in on my clean floors—not for anything I can think of. Mrs. Fred Trenholm, who lives down at Milby’s Corners, she took in three last season. You should have seen them at church. Ungodly don’t express it! Didn’t know the creed even. Couldn’t sit still through divine worship, on the Sabbath, like Christians."