Nevertheless, there was the hope of the seven days when his money might be gone. One by one the seven days came, and in each one it seemed to her in the midst of her waiting as though the day was come for his return. She had never been a woman to gad about the little hamlet or chatter overmuch with the other women there. But now one after another of these twenty or so came by to see and ask, and they asked where her man was, and they cried, “We are all one house in this hamlet and all somehow related to him and kin,” and at last in her pride the mother made a tale of her own and she answered boldly, from a sudden thought in her head, “He has a friend in a far city, and the friend said there was a place there he could work and the wage is good so that we need not wear ourselves upon the land. If the work is not suited to him he will come home soon, but if it be such work as he thinks fit to him, he will not come home until his master gives him holiday.” This she said as calmly as she ever spoke a truth, and the old woman was astounded and she cried, “And why did you not tell me so good a lucky thing, seeing I am his mother?” And the mother made a further tale and she answered, “He told me not to speak, old mother, because he said your tongue was as loose in your mouth as any pebble and all the street would know more than he did, and if he did not like it he would not have them know it.” “Did he so, then!” cackled the old mother, leaning forward on her staff to peer at her daughter’s face, her old empty jaws hanging, and she said half hurt, “It is true I ever was a good talker, daughter, but not so loose as any pebble!” Again and again the mother told the tale and once told she added to it now and then to make it seem more perfect in its truth. Now there was one woman who came often past her house, a widow woman who lived in an elder brother’s house, and she had not overmuch to do, being widowed and childless, and she sat all day making little silken flowers upon a shoe she made for herself, and she could ponder long on any little curious thing she heard. So she pondered on this strange thing of a man gone, and one day she thought of something and she ran down the street as fast as she could on her little feet and she cried shrewdly to the mother, “But there has no letter come a long time to this hamlet and I have not heard of any letter coming to that man of yours!” She went secretly to the only man who knew how to read in the hamlet, and he wrote such few letters as any needed to have written and read such as came for any, and so added a little to his livelihood. This man the widow asked secretly, “Did any letter come for Li The First, who was son to Li The Third in the last generation?” And when the man said no, the gossip cried out, “But there was a letter, or so his wife says, and but a few days ago.”