"I shouldn't wonder if I was. I've had enough t' drive an Indian crazy. Now you jest go off an' leave me 'lone. I ain't no mind to visit--they ain't no way out of it, an' I'm tired o' tryin' to _find_ a way. Go off an' let me be." Her tone was so bitterly hopeless that the great, jolly face of Mrs. Councill stiffened into a look of horror such as she had not known for years. The children, in two separate groups, could be heard rioting. Bees were humming around the clover in the grass, and the kingbird chattered ceaselessly from the Lombardy poplar tip. Both women felt all this peace and beauty of the morning dimly, and it disturbed Mrs. Councill because the other was so impassive under it all. At last, after a long and thoughtful pause, Mrs. Councill asked a question whose answer she knew would decide it all--asked it very kindly and softly: "Creeshy, are you comin' in?" "No," was the short and sullenly decisive answer. Mrs. Councill knew that was the end, and so rose, with a sigh, and went away. "Wal, good-by," she said, simply. Looking back, she saw Lucretia lying at length, with closed eyes and hollow cheeks. She seemed to be sleeping, half-buried in the grass. She did not look up nor reply to her sister-in-law, whose life was one of toil and trouble, also, but not so hard and helpless as Lucretia's. By contrast with most of her neighbors, she seemed comfortable. "Sim Burns, what you ben doin' to that woman?" she burst out, as she waddled up to where the two men were sitting under a cottonwood tree, talking and whittling after the manner of farmers. "Nawthin' 's fur 's I know," answered Burns, not quite honestly, and looking uneasy. "You needn't try t' git out of it like that, Sim Burns," replied his sister. "That woman never got into that fit f'r _nawthin_'." "Wall, if you know more about it than I do, whadgy ask _me_ fur?" he replied, angrily. "Tut, tut!" put in Councill, "hold y'r horses! Don't git on y'r ear, children! Keep cool, and don't spile y'r shirts. Most likely you're all t' blame. Keep cool an' swear less." "Wal, I'll bet Sim's more to blame than she is. Why, they ain't a harder-workin' woman in the hull State of Ioway than she is"---- "Except Marm Councill." "Except nobody. Look at her, jest skin and bones." Councill chuckled in his vast way. "That's so, mother; measured in that way, she leads over you. You git fat on it." She smiled a little, her indignation oozing away. She never "_could_ stay mad," her children were accustomed to tell her. Burns refused to talk any more about the matter, and the visitors gave it up, and got out their team and started for home, Mrs. Councill firing this parting shot: "The best thing you can do to-day is t' let her alone. Mebbe the children 'll bring her round ag'in. If she does come round, you see 't you treat her a little more 's y' did when you was a-courtin' her."