But it was not so easy to get a girl in Verona. "Help is turrible skurce!" was the answer to all Miss Resigned Elizabeth's inquiries; nor did Miss Duty fare better in her search for a boy to fill the place of the delinquent Bijah. They both had to send for old John, the village chore-man, a surly elder, who grumbled bitterly at the half-mile walk on the Indiana road, and wanted to know what folks lived out there in the wilderness for, anyway. A sad time the poor ladies had now. Their pails were mixed up, because old John saw no reason for giving way to such foolishness on the part of the Bute girls, with whom he had gone to school forty years before, and who had never been so all creation as they thought they were, that he knew of. The indignant maidens found baskets marked with hostile initials in the shed; and if old John did not find what he wanted on the premises of one sister, he coolly took it from the other house, without so much as "by your leave." They could not even tell whether they were drinking their own cow's milk, or that of the critter over'n the next yard; for John drove the cows together to whichever pasture he happened to fancy, and milked them together, whistling defiance as he did so. Any remonstrance was met with the announcement that he, John, was only coming to accommodate, and the sooner they found some one else to do their putterin', the better he should be pleased. It was really a dreadful state of things. Why, they might almost as well be living together again, Miss Duty thought; and Miss Resigned Elizabeth thought so, too. And so the days wore on, and the weeks, and made themselves into months; and the Misses Bute mourned in secret for Betsy Garlick and Bijah Green. A year passed, as years do, whether people are comfortable or not. Miss Duty and Miss Resigned Elizabeth were not comfortable; but nobody seemed to care, and help continued to be "turrible skurce." Summer had come again, the late summer even, and the harvest-moon. One evening, just at sunset, as Miss Duty was straining the milk, there came a sharp knock at the door. Miss Duty did not altogether approve of people's knocking at her door at any time, and it was a special outrage just now, when anybody with brains in his head must know that she was busy; so she set down the pan and waited to see what would come next. Another knock came next, so imperious that Miss Duty wiped her hands on her apron and went to the door, outwardly calm, but inwardly raging. There stood Calvin Parks, the driver of the Beulah stage, with a straw in his mouth and a twinkle in his eye. "Lady out here to see you, Miss Bute," he said. "Very important business. Good evenin'!"