"She won't go, or at least she says she won't, though there ain't no use in me tellin' you, Ambrose, bein's as from Susan Jr.'s words you've already guessed," Susan struck in. "But when we ladies got out to the district school this mornin' in the bilin' sun, what do you think, that girl came a-runnin' out to meet us a-wavin' her hand and smilin' and pretendin' she believed we'd come to welcome her to 'Pennyrile.' And then before any of us ladies could speak and tell her our errand, why, she began showin' us around the old school-house and sayin' she knew we would understand, 'cause we were women too, how hard things would be for her if we didn't help her, until most of the delegates either plumb forgot the reason of our visitation or else was too skeered to speak up. It wasn't so with me!" Susan paused for a reply, but her neighbour continued his unusual silence, the while pensively engaged in studying the toe of his boot. Coming farther out on to her porch, Mrs. Barrows' belligerent black curls fluttered like a war banner in the breeze. "Course we women knowed you men tried to make this Miss Em'ly Dunham go, and she wouldn't, but women ain't so easy turned from things they sets out to do. So I told her we didn't want no Yankee school teacher in our district, that we were talkin' things over and meant to get some one to teach our little darkies ourselves. And that our intention in comin' forth to see her had not been to say howdy, but good-bye." Here the joy of battle, even though it had resulted in defeat, actually spread a retrospective glow over the mind of the speaker, for, with her saucepan resting on her one hip and her dishcloth on the other, she was forgetting her work in the glory of narration. "What do you think that girl done when I said them last words to her, Ambrose? She put her head down on the doctor's wife's bosom, bein's as she had more'n the rest of us, and actually shed tears, said she thought that the war was over, and wouldn't we let her stay on for a time until mebbe we'd like her better. And at this the ladies was so outdone they kind of scurried off without gettin' down to anything definite. But I fixed up matters on the way home. I told 'em that if Miss Dunham wouldn't go polite fer the askin', why, 'Pennyrile' could try and see what freezin' out would do, so there ain't a single woman or girl in this here town goin' to exchange the time of day with that girl, ask her to come in and set fer a spell or even bow to her on the street." Still Ambrose remained silent. He knew that Mrs. Barrows was not unkind, but that she loved a fight for its own dramatic sake, and yet what could he do or say to her now that would not by the very force of opposition make things worse for Miner's romance? Susan was growing restless, for she was missing the clash of steel that usually came from the striking of her neighbour's against hers.