"She wanted to give me a dollar, 'cause she had taken me off my route, but I says, 'I guess not, Mis' Tree!' I says. 'I've ben layin' for you ever since you helped mother when she had the fever, and now I've got my chance!' So she laughs and says, call for her on my way back, and I did; but when I found a fourteen-pound turkey sittin' up against my door Christmas mornin',--I wasn't buyin' turkeys that year myself,--I knowed where it come from, and no words said. But what took me was the way she spoke up to that feller. Now some women would have complained, and some would have scol't, and they'd all have gone with the feller 'cause he had a covered team,--but not she! 'You'll get back quicker,' she says, 'from knowin' the way!' and into my team like a flash. Gorry! that's the kind of woman I like to see." "You'll never see another like her!" said Salem Rock. "The likes of Mis' Tree never has ben seen and never will be seen, not in this deestrick. Her tongue was as quick as her heart was kind, and when you say that you've said all there is to say. I s'pose there ain't one of us but could tell a dozen stories like yours, Seth. I dunno as it's proper to tell 'em just now," he paused; "and yet," he continued, "I dunno _but_ it is. She was--so to say--she was all of a piece. You can't think of her without the sharp way she had." "That's so," Seth assented; "that's so every time. There wa'n't nobody thought more of Mis' Tree than what I did, but yet what keeps comin' up to me ever since she was laid away is them quick, sharp kind o' things she'd say. Now take what she said to Mis' Nudd, Isril Nudd's widder. You all know what Isril was; he was mean as dirt and sour as pickles. He'd scrimped his wife, and he'd half-starved her, and some said he'd beat her, but I never knew how that was. Anyway, Marthy Nudd had as poor a time of it as any woman in this village, and everybody knew it. And yet, when he died she mourned for him as if he was Moses and Simeon and the Angel Gabriel all in one. Well, she come to Mis' Tree beggin' for the loan of some shawl or bunnit or toggery to wear, I dunno what; and she was goin' on about her poor husband, and how she had tried to do her duty by him, and hoped he knew it now he was in heaven, and all that kind of talk. Old Mis' Tree let her say about so much and then she stopped her. You know the way she'd hit the floor with her stick. Rap! that stick would go, and any one's heart would sit right up in their boosum. "'That'll do, Marthy!' she says. 'Now listen to me. You say Isril is in heaven?' "'Oh, yes'm, yes, Mis' Tree,' says Marthy. 'He's numbered with the blest, I don't make no doubt on it.' "'And you've got the four hundred dollars life insurance that you told me was due?' "'Yes'm, that's all safe; my brother's put it in the bank for me.'