"I told Miss Pettus," Sidney said later to Kitty Mills, when giving her an account of this encounter with Miss Pettus, "that there was no more satisfaction in quarrelling with you than in fighting a feather bed. But I couldn't do much with her. Nobody can budge 'er, once her dander is up. I left her there, planted right in the middle of the big road, with her skirt dragging behind, and held high before, showing her pigeon-toes turned in worse than ever, and her bonnet hung wild over her left ear, as it always is when she's in one of her tantrums. And now I've come after you, and I want you to stop laughing,--right off the reel, too,--and listen to what I've got to say. I'll vow I don't know what to make of you myself, Kitty Mills! What's this I hear about all the Millses a-swarming down from Green River, and about you're inviting them to dinner? It certainly does seem as if the more they pile on you the better you like it." Mrs. Mills, trying to stop laughing, and wiping her eyes, protested (laughing harder than ever) that Sidney was talking nonsense. She declared that nobody was piling anything on her. She said that she was always delighted to have Sam's sisters come, because Sam liked to have them, and Father Mills liked it, too. "Well, they oughtn't to like it; they ought to be ashamed to like it. It's nothing less than scandalous to allow it, when you've got to cook the dinner after nursing all night, and the weather's getting real warm," said Sidney, sharply, jerking out a knitting-needle, and slapping the ball of yarn back under her arm. "But you know, Sidney, neither Sam nor Father Mills have much enjoyment. Sam's had a mighty hard time this winter, with the misery in his back, coming on whenever he tried to do anything; and all his bad luck too." "What bad luck?" demanded Sidney, hard-heartedly. "Why, didn't you know about his corn? Every ear of his share of the crop, that his tenant raised on that field of mine, rotted right in the pen, when nobody else lost any. I declare I can't yet see how it was." "Did Sam cover his pen as everybody else did?" asked Sidney, relentlessly. Kitty Mills stared, growing grave for an instant or two, being much puzzled. She wondered what in the world the question could possibly have to do with her husband's loss of his corn. "No. He didn't cover the corn," she replied, much at a loss still. "He thought the winter was going to be drier than it turned out to be. And he doesn't often make mistakes in prophesying about the weather. He's a mighty close, good observer of all the signs. I've known him to sit still a whole day, without getting out of his chair, watching to see whether the ground-hog saw its shadow."