“Shrewsbury’s be’n held up consid’able for me to smile at,” said the poor old soul, “but I tell ye, dear, it’s hard to go an’ live twenty-two miles from where you’ve always had your home and friends. It may divert me, but it won’t be home. You might as well set out one o’ my old apple-trees on the beach, so ’t could see the waves come in,—there wouldn’t be no please to it.” “Where are you going to live in Shrewsbury?” I asked presently. “I don’t expect to stop long, dear creatur’. I’m ’most seventy-six year old,” and Mrs. Peet turned to look at me with pathetic amusement in her honest wrinkled face. “I said right out to Is’iah, before a roomful o’ the neighbors, that I expected it of him to git me home an’ bury me when my time come, and do it respectable; but I wanted to airn my livin’, if ’twas so I could, till then. He’d made sly talk, you see, about my electin’ to leave the farm and go ’long some o’ my own folks; but”—and she whispered this carefully—“he didn’t give me no chance to stay there without hurtin’ my pride and dependin’ on him. I ain’t said that to many folks, but all must have suspected. A good sight on ’em’s had money of Is’iah, though, and they don’t like to do nothin’ but take his part an’ be pretty soft spoken, fear it’ll git to his ears. Well, well, dear, we’ll let it be bygones, and not think of it no more;” but I saw the great tears roll slowly down her cheeks, and she pulled her bonnet forward impatiently, and looked the other way. “There looks to be plenty o’ good farmin’ land in this part o’ the country,” she said, a minute later. “Where be we now? See them handsome farm buildin’s; he must be a well-off man.” But I had to tell my companion that we were still within the borders of the old town where we had both been born. Mrs. Peet gave a pleased little laugh, like a girl. “I’m expectin’ Shrewsbury to pop up any minute. I’m feared to be kerried right by. I wa’n’t never aboard of the cars before, but I’ve so often thought about em’ I don’t know but it seems natural. Ain’t it jest like flyin’ through the air? I can’t catch holt to see nothin’. Land! and here’s my old cat goin’ too, and never mistrustin’. I ain’t told you that I’d fetched her.” “Is she in that basket?” I inquired with interest. “Yis, dear. Truth was, I calc’lated to have her put out o’ the misery o’ movin’, an spoke to one o’ the Barnes boys, an’ he promised me all fair; but he wa’n’t there in season, an’ I kind o’ made excuse to myself to fetch her along. She’s an’ old creatur’, like me, an’ I can make shift to keep her some way or ’nuther; there’s probably mice where we’re goin’, an’ she’s a proper mouser that can about keep herself if there’s any sort o’ chance. ’Twill be somethin’ o’ home to see her goin’ an’ comin’, but I expect we’re both on us goin’ to miss our old haunts. I’d love to know what kind o’ mousin’ there’s goin’ to be for me.”