Narcissa shook her head. "I asked him last time he come back," she said. "I've asked him two or three times; but all he does is nod his head and laugh, the way he has. He ain't one to talk, Uncle Pinker ain't. He goes to Rome once every fall, when he kills the turkeys. The biggest part of 'em goes the other way, to Tupham and on beyond, but he allers takes some portion to Rome. He says they're great on turkeys there. I should think they would be, shouldn't you?" This was a long speech for Narcissa, and she relapsed into silence and the picture. "And you live all alone here with a deef old man who don't talk?" said Romulus Patten. "Excuse _me_, Miss--well, you haven't told me your name, have you?" and he laughed a little. "Narcissa," was the reply. "Narcissa White." "Thank you!" said the well-mannered Romulus. "You live all alone with him, and don't see no company? It's lonesome for you, ain't it?" "I--don't--know," Narcissa answered thoughtfully. "I never thought much about it's bein' lonesome. I have the turkeys, and they're a good deal of company: and I--I think about things." A faint color stole into her clear white cheek, as she remembered the velvet gown. She supposed a man would consider such thoughts "triflin'." "Don't you see anything of the neighbors?" the young man persisted. "There's a young lady down at the next house, half a mile below here,--wide-awake looking girl, with yeller hair and red cheeks, looks some like a geranium; don't you know her?" "That's Delilah Parshley!" said Narcissa. "She's real handsome, don't you think so? No, I don't see her, only to meetin' sometimes. I guess she don't care to go much with folks up this way. Her friends is mostly the other way, on the Tupham road. Their house sets on the corner, you know." Narcissa did not know--how should she?--that Delilah Parshley and the other girls of her sort considered her "a little wanting," because she was silent, and never seemed interested in the doings of the neighbors, or of such stray travellers as came along the road to Rome. She felt kindly toward the Parshleys, as toward all the "meetin' folks;" but she rarely held speech with them, and was "gettin' as dumb as the old man was deef," the neighbors were beginning to say. "But haven't you got any folks of your own?" this persistent young man went on. "I--I hope I'm not too forth-puttin', Miss White, but I'd like to know." "I'm sure you're real kind to ask!" replied Narcissa, who was not used to having any one care to ask her questions. "Yes, I've got _some_ folks. Father's livin', but he's married again, and there's more children, and he was glad to have me find a chance; and it was so that I was glad, too," she added, with no resentment in her tone, but a touch of sadness, which made the ready color come into those tell-tale cheeks of Romulus Patten.