"Well, I just don't care," said Mrs. Norton. "How in the world could I get a stone? I have been having the awfulest time with our windmill. The thingumajig that is supposed to turn it off has got broken or something and it keeps pumping water all over where I don't want it to. If I had an artificial pond like the Harmons I would know what to do with so much water. I wonder when Jonas Hicks will get back?" "I wonder!" echoed Mrs. Dix. "I was depending upon him. Mr. Dix said he expected him back in a day or two. If it had n't been for that he would n't have taken Fred along; for you know I can't put a saddle on Major myself. Jonas will probably be back to-day or to-morrow he said." "I am su-u-u-ure," said little Grandma Plympton, in her sweet and feeble tremolo,--"I am su-u-u-ure that if we had all asked Mr. Hicks to get us a stone he would most willingly have done so. Mr. Hicks would do anything for a lady." Grandma Plympton--what there was left of her after seventy-four years of time's attrition--had a way of speaking which made it easy enough to believe that she had, in her day, been a beautiful singer. As her message to the world was usually one of promise and reassurance, she had the gift of dwelling with songlike sweetness on those words in which the music lay. She was altogether lovable and quaint. On fine days she would still go forth alone, bearing her mother-of-pearl card-case, and she would leave her card here or there as naturally as a flower drops a petal; for despite her years she had by no means turned traitor to Society. Nor had Society so much as thought of leaving her out. In her, indeed, the fine flower of aristocracy was still in bloom, and delicately fragrant. The party, suiting their pace to hers, went more slowly after passing Plymptons', whereupon Grandma, finding herself thus accommodated, gave over what efforts she had been making and went more slowly still; and so, when they came to the Brown place, which faced the middle of the common, they were moving at a most deliberate rate. As they arrived opposite the small gate, they all, as if by simultaneous thought, stopped at once.