"I did expect to, but I've had dyspepsia so bad in my left foot that I haven't been able to finish my sewing. When I have dyspepsia in my foot this way it feels like it hasn't a bit of feeling in it, and makes me so nervous I'm not fit for a thing. It's a great deal worse than gout. I have gout in my right foot and can put my finger on the spot, but when you feel bad and can't exactly find the place that hurts and haven't any name to call it by it gets on your nerves so that--" "Everybody runs when they see you coming. For goodness' sake don't get on nerves, Puss. Where are you going?" Mrs. Deford looked up. Lily, her daughter, was trying to get by. "I want to see Sarah Sue Moon about something," she said. "I promised to be there by twelve and it's nearly half-past. Excuse me, Miss Georganna! Did I step on your toe? Good-bye." She nodded to the others and went into the hall, and her mother, getting up, took the chair she had left and drew it a little apart from her guests. "Lily doesn't look well, Laura." Miss Georganna Brickhouse, who always talked through her nose and seemingly with it, owing to the nervous twitching of her nostrils, looked at Mrs. Deford. "You ought to take her away." "Ought I? If you had a daughter eighteen who didn't want to go away how would you make her do it? Up to this summer we've never had any discussions on the subject. She has always done as I said and gone where I decided, but this year she persists in staying in this dead-and-buried place, and says she don't want to go away. She is very well, but she's got to go the first of August." "Where are you going? Certainly do wish I had somebody to make me do things. Every time I make up my mind to do this, I wish I'd made it up to do that. But I'm like Lily. I'm more comfortable at home then anywhere else, and I don't think Yorkburg's dead and buried. Things are moving too fast for me. I wish I could make them stop and let it stay just like it is forever and ever. Where are you going in August?" Mrs. Deford turned and looked at Miss Puss, her lorgnette at a withering angle. "We are going to the coast of Maine." She took up her embroidery and held it off at arm's-length to get its effect. "How is your mother, Lizzie Bettie?" "Very well, thank you, though she thinks she's sick. I want mother to go away. I wish she and Maria could go to the coast of Maine. Maria's as nervous as a cat, and if she don't go somewhere we'll all be to pieces before the summer's over. Where will you stay, Laura? Is it very expensive? I've heard some places up there are very cheap." "Cheap? Nothing's cheap after you leave Washington. But we are not going to a hotel. We are going to visit friends." "Must be ashamed of them, as you don't mention their names. Wouldn't have asked if I'd known it was a secret." And Miss Lizzie Bettie took the fan out of Miss Georganna Brickhouse's hands and began to use it as if hot with something more than summer heat.