As he rose to empty his pan within, and start afresh, he could be seen more fully. He was clumsily cased from neck to ankles in brown over-alls, threadbare, discolored, patched, with mud about the knees and ragged edges lower down. He wore rubber boots, over the bulging legs of which the trousers came reluctantly, and the huge feet of these were slit down the instep. His hat had been soft and black once; now it seemed stiffened with dirt, to which the afternoon milking had lent a new contribution of short reddish hair, and was shapeless and colorless from age. His back was narrow and bent, and his long arms terminated in hands which it seemed sinful to have touch anything thereafter to be eaten. Viewed from behind, Milton appeared to be at least fifty. But his face showed a somewhat younger man, despite its sun-baked lines and the frowzy beard which might be either the yellow of unkempt youth or the gray of untidy age. In reality he was not yet thirty-six. He slouched out now with a fresh lot of apples, and, squatting on the door-stone, resumed the conversation. “I s’pose naow Sissly’s gone, ther’ won’t be no livin’ under th’ same roof with Sabriny fer any of us. Ther’ ain’t nobuddy lef’ fer her to rassle with ’cep’ us. Ole Lemuel’s so broken-up, he won’t dare say his soul’s his own; ’n John--well, Lize Wilkins says she heerd him say he didn’t know’s he’d come to th’ funer’l ’t all, after th’ way him ’n’ Sabriny hed it aout las’ time he was here.” “I wasn’t talkin’ o’ _them!_” said Alvira, slapping the flour from her hands’ and beginning with the roller; “it’d be nothin’ new, her tryin’ to boss _them_. But she’s got her dander up naow agin somebuddy that beats them all holler. They won’t no Richardsons come puttin’ on airs ’raoun’ here, an’ takin’ th’ parlor bedroom ’thaout askin’, not ef th’ ole lady knaows herself--’n’ I guess she does.” “What Richardsons?” asked Milton. “Thought Sissly was th’ last of ’em--thet they wa’n’t no more Richardsons.” “Why, man alive, ain’t Albert’s wife a Richardson, th’ daughter of Sissly’s cousin--you remember, that pock-pitted man who kep’ th’ fast hoss here one summer. Of course she’s a Richardson--full-blooded! When she come up from th’ train here this mornin’, with Albert, I see by th’ ole lady’s eye ’t she meant misch’f. I didn’t want to see no raow, here with a corpse in th’ haouse, ’n’ so I tried to smooth matters over, ’n’ kind o’ quiet Sabriny daown, tellin’ her thet they had to come to th’ fu-ner’l, ’n’ they’d go ’way soon’s it was through with, ’n’ that Albert, bein’ the oldest son, hed a right to th’ comp’ny bed-room.” “’N’ what’d she say?” “She didn’t say much, ’cep’ thet th’ Richardsons hed never brung nothin’ but bad luck to this haouse, ’n’ they never would, nuther. ’N’ then she flaounced upstairs to her room, jis’s she allus does when she’s riled, ’n’ she give Albert’s wife sech a look, I said to m’self, ‘Milady, I wouldn’t be in _your_ shoes fer all yer fine fixin’s.’”