"Law, then, let 'em!" said Dilly, with a kindly indulgence. "It don't do them no hurt, an' it gives me more fun'n the county newspaper. They'd ruther I'd say I was a witch'n tell 'em I've got four eyes an' eight ears where they 'ain't but two. I tell ye, there's a good deal missed when ye stay to home makin' pies, an' a good deal ye can learn if ye live out-door. Why, there's Tolman's cows! He dunno why they dry up; but I do. He, sends that little Davie with 'em, that don't have no proper playtime; an' Davie gallops 'em all the way to pastur', so't he can have a minute to fish in the brook. An' then he gallops 'em home ag'in, because he's stole a piece out o' the arternoon. I ketched him down there by the brook, one day, workin' away with a bent pin, an' the next mornin' I laid a fish-hook on the rock, an' hid in the woods to see what he'd say. My! I 'guess Jonah wa'n't more tickled when he set foot on dry land. Here comes the wagons! There's the Poorhouse team fust, an' Sally Flint settin' up straighter 'n a ramrod. An' there's Heman an' Roxy! She don't look a day older'n twenty-five. Proper nice folks, all on 'em, but they make me kind o' homesick jest because they _be_ folks. They do look so sort o' common in their bunnits an' veils, an' I keep thinkin' o' little four-legged creatur's, all fur!" The Tiverton folk saluted them, always cordially, yet each after his kind. They liked Dilly as a product all their own, but one to be partaken of sparingly, like some wild, intoxicating root. They loved her better at home, too, than at Sudleigh Fair. It was like a betrayal of their fireside secrets, to see her there in her accustomed garb; so slight a concession to propriety would have lain in her putting on a bonnet and shawl! As they neared Sudleigh town, the road grew populous with carriages and farm-wagons, "step and step," not all from Tiverton way, but gathered in from the roads converging here. Men were walking up and down the market street, crying their whips, their toy balloons, and a multitude of cheaper gimcracks. "Forty miles from home! forty miles from home!" called one, more imaginative than the rest. "And no place to lay my head! That's why I'm selling these little whips here to-day, a stranger in a strange land. Buy one! buy one! and the poor pilgrim'll have a supper and a bed! Keep your money in your pocket, and he's a wanderer on the face of the earth!" Dilly, the fearless in her chosen wilds, took a fold of Molly's dress, and held it tight. "You s'pose that's so?" she whispered. "Oh, dear! I 'ain't got a mite o' money, on'y these six eggs. Oh, why didn't he stay to home, if he's so possessed to sleep under cover? What does anybody leave their home _for_, if they've got one?" But Molly put up her head, and walked sturdily on. "Don't you worry," she counselled, in an undertone. "It don't mean any more 'n it does when folks say they're sellin' at a sacrifice. I guess they expect to make enough, take it all together."