“Quite a number,” replied Mrs. Todd grandly, “but some are gone and the rest are married and settled. She never was a great hand to go about visitin’. I don’t know but Mis’ Martin might be called a little peculiar. Even her own folks has to make company of her; she never slips in and lives right along with the rest as if ’twas at home, even in her own children’s houses. I heard one o’ her sons’ wives say once she’d much rather have the Queen to spend the day if she could choose between the two, but I never thought Abby was so difficult as that. I used to love to have her come; she may have been sort o’ ceremonious, but very pleasant and sprightly if you had sense enough to treat her her own way. I always think she’d know just how to live with great folks, and feel easier ’long of them an’ their ways. Her son’s wife’s a great driver with farm-work, boards a great tableful o’ men in hayin’ time, an’ feels right in her element. I don’t say but she’s a good woman an’ smart, but sort o’ rough. Anybody that’s gentle-mannered an’ precise like Mis’ Martin would be a sort o’ restraint. “There’s all sorts o’ folks in the country, same’s there is in the city,” concluded Mrs. Todd gravely, and I as gravely agreed. The thick woods were behind us now, and the sun was shining clear overhead, the morning mists were gone, and a faint blue haze softened the distance; as we climbed the hill where we were to see the view, it seemed like a summer day. There was an old house on the height, facing southward,—a mere forsaken shell of an old house, with empty windows that looked like blind eyes. The frost-bitten grass grew close about it like brown fur, and there was a single crooked bough of lilac holding its green leaves close by the door. “We’ll just have a good piece of bread-an’-butter now,” said the commander of the expedition, “and then we’ll hang up the basket on some peg inside the house out o’ the way o’ the sheep, and have a han’some entertainment as we’re comin’ back. She’ll be all through her little dinner when we get there, Mis’ Martin will; but she’ll want to make us some tea, an’ we must have our visit an’ be startin’ back pretty soon after two. I don’t want to cross all that low ground again after it ’s begun to grow chilly. An’ it looks to me as if the clouds might begin to gather late in the afternoon.” Before us lay a splendid world of sea and shore. The autumn colors already brightened the landscape; and here and there at the edge of a dark tract of pointed firs stood a row of bright swamp maples like scarlet flowers. The blue sea and the great tide inlets were untroubled by the lightest winds.