She stepped to the door to listen, and heard 'Gene's mother cackling away like an old hen. How she would carry on, with anybody that came along! She hadn't never settled down, not a bit really, for all she had been married and was a widow and was old. It wa'n't nice to be so lively as that, at her age. But she _wasn't_ nice, Mother Powers wasn't, for all she was good to Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene. Nelly liked nice people, she thought, as she went back to shake the rag rugs out of the window; refined ladies like Mrs. Bayweather, the minister's wife. That was the way _she_ wanted to be, and have little Addie grow up. She lingered at the window a moment looking up at the thick dark branches of the big pine. How horrid it was to have that great tree so close to the house! It shaded the bedroom so that there was a musty smell no matter how much it was aired. And the needles dropped down so messy too, and spoiled the grass. Frank's voice came up the stairs, bold, laughing, "Nelly, Nelly, come down here a minute. I want to ask you something!" "I can't," she called back. Didn't he have the nerve! "Why can't you?" the skeptical question came from halfway up the stairs. "I saw you on the side-porch, just as I came up." Nelly cast about for an excuse. Of course you had to have some _reason_ for saying you couldn't see a neighbor who came in. She had an inspiration. "I'm washing my hair," she called back, taking out the hair-pins hastily, as she spoke. The great coils came tumbling down on her shoulders. She soused them in the water pitcher, and went to the door, opening it a crack, tipping her head forward so that the water streamed on the floor. "Can't you ask Mother Powers for whatever it is?" she said impatiently. She wished as she spoke that she could ever speak right out sharp and scratchy the way other people did. She was too easy, that was the trouble. "Well," said Frank, astonished, "you be, for a fact." He went back down the stairs, and Nelly shut the door. She was hot all over with impatience about that butter. When it wasn't one thing to keep her from her work, it was another. Her hair all wet now. And such a job to dry it! She heard voices in the kitchen, and the screen-door open. Thank goodness, Frank was going away! Oh my! Maybe he was going to the village! He could bring some of the pink mercerized cotton on his way back. He might as well be of _some_ use in the world. She thrust her head out of the window. "Frank, Frank, wait a minute!" she called. She ran back to her work-basket, cut a length from a spool of thread, wound it around a bit of paper, and went again to the window. "Say, Frank, get me two spools of cotton to match that, will you, at Warner and Hardy's." He rode his horse past the big pine, under her window, and stood up in the stirrups, looking up boldly at her, her hair in thick wet curls about her face. "I'd do anything for you!" he said jokingly, catching at the paper she threw down to him.