"I dreamed once about an Indian temple," the woman went on, "and you'd really think I'd been there, I saw it so plain. Fat priests and that big idol that sits cross-legged, all made of brass, and smiling; and such funny drums and pipes--creepy music. The heathens brought wreaths and stretched out on their stomachs flat on the ground. I'd read it somewhere, I guess. I could smell the flowers, like pond lilies and honeysuckle." She poured away the dish water, wiped the pan and began rinsing her towels and cloths in a small wooden tub bound with tin. The girl moved aimlessly about the room, fingering the worn furniture. "That clock looks awfully old," she said abruptly, pausing before a square high Dutch affair with a ridiculous picture of Mount Vernon, wobbly-columned, let in at the bottom. "Goodness, yes! That clock--why, that clock was a wedding present to Lorenzo's great aunt Valeria--she was a Swedenborgian, I believe. She used to have trances and she could tell you where things were lost. That chair by the window was her mother's. It's made with wooden nails, dowels, they call 'em." "Did she live here, too?" "Yes, indeed. The Winterpines are great hands to stay in one place. And the way they come back to die! I'm half Winterpine myself--he and I were second cousins--and I well remember Uncle Milton Winterpine coming home from Java to die in his bed. He was a sailor, and how I used to hang around and coax him to tell me what he'd seen! I remember how he staggered into the house--Mother Winterpine was living then. "'Here, Esther, here's a fifty-pound sack of Old Gov'ment Javvy for ye, green, and fit for the president's table as soon's it gits ripe,' he says, 'and you won't have to nurse me long;' and we got his boots off and helped him to bed. He never left it. He brought me a parrot, that trip, sort of indigo color and pink. It used to set me thinking of the hot countries and pineapples and natives, and those tall trees with all the leaves on top--palms, I guess I mean. It seems the stars are lower, there, and look bigger; did you ever see the Southern Cross?" "Oh, yes. It's like any other stars. The first officer on the P & O line always asks me to come and see it. Then he proposes. J. G. plays poker the whole trip. He can't lose. He says it's tiresome." The strange dialogue went on for what might have been an hour. Far ports and foreign streets, full sails and thronged inns, the fountains of paved courts, the market squares of dark and vivid nations, blossomed from the tongue of this chair-bound woman in her farmhouse prison; and from the blind, unhappy voyager came halting, telegraphic phrases: climate and train schedules and over-lavish fees, miles and meals and petty miseries. No sunset had stained her hurried way, no handed flowers from shy street children had sweetened it. And ever and again she returned insistently to the barnyard interests of the Winterpines!