rats!" the woman said rudely. "That's four of them things that's gone through that bridge this week, and I'm good and sick of it. Ain't there any other bridges in Chester county?"
"Not like that," retorted Tish, eying the ruins. "You don't call that a bridge, do you?"
"It was," said the woman.
She came forward and a ferocious-looking dog stepped from behind her.
Tish looked at the dog.
"It wasn't much of a bridge," she said, more politely. "If you've got any men on the place I'll give them a dollar apiece to get my machine out of there."
"No men around," said the woman shortly. "Theodore,"—to the dog—"don't you go around bitin' until I give you the word. Sit down."
The dog sat down.
"Before you leave," she said to Tish, "you'll mend that bridge or I'll know the reason why. Meantime your automobile is trespassin', and the fine is twenty dollars."
Then she sat down on the bank and began to tickle the dog's ears with a blade of grass.
"Theodore," she said, "if them three old maids think they can bluff us, they don't know us, do they?"
I had stood about as much as I could, so I walked around in front of her and glared at her.
"I wouldn't sit so close to the automobile if I were you," I remarked emphatically. "Something is likely to explode."
"I feel like it," she said. "When I get mad I'm good an' mad. Anyhow, I own this place, and I'll sit where I please. Theodore, let's put the washing-machine on wheels and go round the country bustin' down folks' bridges and playin' hell generally!"
An oath always rouses Tish. She got the engine stopped. Then she came around beside me with her goggles shoved up on her forehead.
"Woman," she said sternly, "how dare you mention the place of punishment so lightly!" Tish had been superintendent of a Sunday-school for thirty years.
The woman stared at her. Then she got up slowly.
"I wasn't alludin' to the next world," she said bitterly. "Ninety-five degrees of heat, seven inches of dust, five miles to a telephone and ten miles to town, with an automobile sittin' down in your front yard—that's all the hell I want"
Then she walked up the path. We stared after her; between her shoulder-blades her blue wrapper was wet through with sweat, and the dog trailed at her heels. Aggie, who is always sentimental, took a step after her.
"I say," she called. "If we come back for you some nice afternoon, will you let us take you for a ride?"
But she got no answer. To our amazement, the woman turned around at the top of the path and put her thumb to her nose!
We did not see her again for some time, but after Tish had climbed in twice and started the engine, to see if the car couldn't climb out— the only result being that it almost turned over —the woman appeared again. She carried a board that looked like a breadboard nailed to a broom-handle, and on it, in fresh ink, as if she had done it with her finger, were the words: Trespassing—fifty dollars."
"You said twenty before," I protested. That was for those little dinky, one-seated affairs," she said, jabbing the broom-handle into the dirt beside the road. "Two seats, forty dollars; two seats and a folded back buggy-top, fifty." She adjusted the sign carefully, looked up and down the road, and then went back to the house.
So we sat down on the bank and Tish explained how she happened to do it. I am a Christian woman, and Aggie is so gentle that she has to scratch twice to light a match, but I must say we were bitter. We told Tish we didn't care how she happened to do it, and that some day she would be punished for a temper that made her throw away books that she would be sure to need some time; and that, anyhow, an unmarried woman of fifty has no business with an automobile.
"It's my belief," Tish retorted, "that she keeps her old bridge for this very purpose. She could make a good living off it, and all the work she'd have to do would be to build it up after every accident."
"Oh, no," Aggie said bitterly. "We are going to repair it, I believe."
The back of my neck began to smart from the sun, and the dust eddied around us. A white hen came down the path, hopped on to the sloping step of the machine, perked its head at us, and then, with a squawk, flew up into Tish's seat behind the wheel. I was thirsty and my neck prickled.
Early in the afternoon we had a difference of opinion about who should walk the five miles to telephone for help, and after that we did not speak to each other. Tish talked to the machine and Aggie to the chicken. Every now and then Tish, after staring at the machine for a while, would get up and pick up the soundest of the bridge timbers, put it under the dropped end of the car and push with all her might.
"Call this a bridge?"—push—"Why, this is nothing"—push—"but a rotten old fence-rail!" —bang!—the timber broke. Tish stood with her back to us and kicked the pieces; then she turned on us. "As far as I'm concerned," she snapped, "the thing can sit there till it takes root. You're very much mistaken if you think I'm going to walk to that telephone, after bringing you out on a pleasure trip."
"Pleasure trip!" Aggie retorted. "I can get more pleasure out of a three-dollar rocking-chair. The next time you ask me to go on a pleasure trip, Tish Carberry, just push me off the porch backward. It's a good bit quicker."
By four o'clock I had a rash out all over my shoulders and chest, and my mouth was so full of dust that my teeth felt gritty. I had not cared particularly about going up to the house, but every few minutes between three and four the woman had come out, pumped some water, making a mighty splash, and gone back into the house again. It was more than human nature could stand. At a quarter after four o'clock I got up from the baked earth, glared at Tish, looked through Aggie, and walked with as much dignity as I could muster up the path to the well. There was a sign hung on it by a string around the nail in the top. It read: "Water, one dollar a tin. For automobiles, five dollars a bucket."
The woman came out and pumped some. The water ran cool and clear into a trough and then spread over the ground in dreadful waste. I could have lapped it up out of the trough; every bit of skin on me and lining membrane in me yelled "Water!" and—I had no money with me! The woman stood and waited, Theodore beside her.
"That's an outrage," I fumed. "How dare you put up such a sign! I—I shall report you!"
"Who to?" she inquired. "I ain't askin' you to drink it, am I? It's my well, ain't it?"
"I'll send the money to you by mail." I had lost all my pride. "I'll come back and pay you."
"Cash in advance," said the creature; and, pumping enough into a tin basin to have cooled me inside and out, she put it down for the dog to drink!
Chapter III.
A Difference of Opinion and a Bargain
I have always felt that we did the right thing that night. It was all very well for Charlie Sands, Tish's nephew, when he heard the story, to say:
