“I don't see why a cow can't learn somethin', can't learn to come home at night, anyway. Everything else learns to come home at night. Ketch a dog forgittin' it. I 'spose old Bloss has gone as fur as she could git, an' you can't allears hear the bell. But Martha'll find her.” The woman came from the stove to the table. “Martha can read, an' she can spell out of the spellin' book. She's real smart.” A stone jar sat on a bench in the corner of the room, beside it was a yellow gourd with a long handle, the bowl of the gourd cut out to form a dipper. The woman got a plate out of the cupboard. A very old plate, somewhat chipped, with quaint little flowers painted on it in bright colors. The plate had not been used for a long time. It was covered with white dust. She carried the plate over to the jar, dipped up some water with the gourd, and holding the plate over a bucket, poured on the water, then she polished the plate carefully with a cloth and set it on the table. Her conversation continued. “The schoolhouse is old, but it's got a good roof on it. It'll turn the weather. Ole man Dix put that roof on three years ago. The clapboards are all smoothed with a drawin' knife. He was so slow that it made you tired jest to see him workin', but he done a good job. He used to have a savin' that he got out of the Bible--when you made fun of him for bein' so slow. He must have heard it in meetin'. He couldn't read. But I've heard him say it over an' over a thousand times, I reckon--'He that believeth shall not make haste.' I don't know what he believed. I know he was never paid nothin' for puttin' on the roof.” “How do you know that he was not paid?” said the man. “I know it very well,” said the woman. “He was dyin' of the janders all the time. He sawed the comb of the roof the very day before he went.” The iron skillet on which the woman was baking cakes, overheated, at this moment caught fire. She lifted it from the stove, blew out the flame, and turned the cake with a deft twist of her hand. Engaged with the pancakes for the man's supper, her conversation became a monologue. She reviewed the families living in the mountains, enumerated the children, named them, classed them as good or bad with a few clear strokes and attached the history of their ancestors, running on, as she moved about. Then, when she had finished, she got a little yellow bowl from the cupboard and came with it in her hand to the door. “I wonder what's keepin' Martha,” she murmured. At the door she came near to dropping the bowl out of her hand in her astonishment. A little figure in a red calico sun-bonnet sat beside the man on the mill porch; close beside him in the gloom of the descending night. “Goodness!” said the woman. “How you skeered me. When did you git back?” The child arose, laughing. In the darkness only the bonnet, the short dress, the little white legs were visible. “While you were talkin', Mother,” she replied.