"It's full of fleas," said the traveler carelessly, "and moldy old places--it's awfully cold, too. I wore my furs a lot of the time. It smells bad nearly everywhere. Do you stay here in the winter, too?" "I've stayed here forty-five winters"--she turned the ham capably--"and I expect to stay as many more as the Lord spares my life! I was born here. So was father. Grandfather was born right in the Corners. In eighty-eight we were snowed up a week here. Mr. Winterpine--that's my husband--had bronchitis, and he couldn't get out to tend to the stock. Edgar--that was the hired man's name--was only twenty, and I had to help with one of the cows; I went out in my chair through a snow tunnel!" She chuckled reminiscently and her guests listened, fascinated. "We were caught in a bad storm outside of St. Petersburg, once," Gold-bag volunteered. "If it hadn't been for J. G. we'd have gone out, probably. As it was, the driver lost a finger." "St. Petersburg, Russia?" the woman inquired respectfully, her skillet full of potatoes colored like autumn beech leaves. The girl nodded. "J. G. swore at the man, so he didn't _dare_ die," she continued, with a hard little grin; "and we just about pulled through." "Who is J. G.?" asked Caroline abruptly. "J. G. Terwilliger," she answered simply. It was as if one had said "Edward Seventh" or "Adelina Patti" or "P. T. Barnum." "Who's he?" "He's my father, for one thing. I suppose you know who he is as well as anybody else." "I never heard of him," Caroline said carelessly, "are you all ready, now, Mrs. Winterpine?" "He is the greatest mining expert in the world," the girl declared emphatically, "and I don't know where you've lived not to know it. You--" with a look at the woman, "you know him, of course?" "I don't know anybody of that name, no," the woman admitted; "but then, you know, we don't know much, 'way off here, about city people." "There hasn't been a daily paper for ten days that hasn't had his name in it," the girl remarked dryly. Mrs. Winterpine wiped her face, flanked the ham with the potatoes, assembled an incredible array of sweets and relishes in odd, thick little glass dishes, and with a wave of her hand indicated her guests' places. "We take the _Lockwood's Corners Clarion_," she explained pacifically.