brightness blinded her. … "Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh … warte nur … balde … ruhest … du … " she began to murmur, and stopped, awed by the immensity of the hush about her. She closed her eyes, pillowed her head on her upthrown arms, and sank into a wide, bright reverie, which grew dimmer and vaguer as the slow changeless hours filed by.
She did not know if it were from a doze, or but from this dreamy haze that she was wakened by the sound of voices outside the house, under the window by which she lay. There were the tones of a stranger and those of old Mrs. Pritchard, but now flowing on briskly with a volubility unrecognizable. Virginia sat up, hesitating. Were they only passing by, or stopping? Should she show herself or let them go on? In an instant the question was settled for her. It was too late. She would only shame them if they knew her there. She had caught her own name. They were talking of her.
"Well, you needn't," said the voice of Mrs. Pritchard. "You can just save your breath to cool your porridge. You can't get nothin out'n her."
"But she s traveled round so much, seems's though … " began the other woman's voice.
"Don't it?" struck in old Mrs. Pritchard assentingly. "But 'taint so!"
The other was at a loss. "Do you mean she's stuck-up and won't answer you?" Mrs. Pritchard burst into a laugh, the great, resonant good-nature of which amazed Virginia. She had not dreamed that one of these sour, silent people could laugh like that. "No, land no, Abby! She's as soft-spoken as anybody could be, poor thing! She ain't got nothin' to say. That's all. Why, I can git more out'n any pack-peddler that's only been from here to Rutland and back than out'n her … and she's traveled all summer long for five years, she was tellin' us, and last year went around the world."
"Good land! Think of it!" cried the other, awe-struck. "China! An Afriky! An London!"
"That's the way we felt! That's the reason we let her come. There ain't no profit in one boarder, and we never take boarders, anyhow. But I thought 'twould be a chance for the young ones to learn something about how foreign folks lived." She broke again into her epic laugh. "Why, Abby, 'twould ha' made you die to see us the first few days she was there, tryin' to get somethin out'n her. Italy, now … had she been there? Oh, yes, she adored Italy!" Virginia flushed at the echo of her own exaggerated accent. "Well, we'd like to know somethin' 'bout Italy. What did they raise there? Honest, Abby, you'd ha' thought we'd hit her side th' head. She thought and she thought, and all she could say was 'olives.' Nothing else? 'Well, she'd never noticed anything else … oh, yes, lemons.' Well, that seemed kind o' queer vittles, but you can't never tell how foreigners git along, so we thought maybe they just lived off'n olives and lemons; and Joel he asked her how they raised 'em, and if they manured heavy or trusted to phosphate, and how long the trees took before they began to bear, and if they pruned much, and if they had the same trouble we do, come harvest time, to hire hands enough to git in th' crop."
She paused. The other woman asked, "Well, what did she say?"
The echoes rang again to the old woman s great laugh. "We might as well ha' asked her bout the back side of th' moon! So we gave up on olives and lemons! Then Eben he asked her 'bout taxes there. Were they on land mostly and were they high and who 'sessed 'em and how 'bout school tax. Did the state pay part o' that? You see town meetin' being so all tore up every year 'bout taxes, Eben he thought 'twould be a chance to hear how other folks did, and maybe learn somethin'. Good land, Abby, I've set there and most died, trying to keep from yellin' right out with laugh to see our folks tryin' to learn somethin' 'bout foreign parts from that woman that's traveled in 'em steady for five years. I bet she was folded and gagged and had cotton in her ears the hull time she was there!"
"Didn't she tell you anythin bout taxes?"
"Taxes? You'd ha' thought 'twas bumble-bees' hind legs we was askin' 'bout! She ackshilly seemed s'prised to be asked. Land! What had she ever thought 'bout such triflin' things as taxes. She didn't know how they was taxed in Italy, or if they was … nor anywhere else. That what it come down to, every time. She didn't know! She didn't know what kind of schools they had, nor what the roads was made of, nor who made 'em. She couldn't tell you what hired men got, nor any wages, nor what girls that didn't get married did for a living, nor what rent they paid, nor how they 'mused themselves, nor how much land was worth, nor if they had factories, nor if there was any lumberin' done, nor how they managed to keep milk in such awful hot weather without ice. Honest, Abby, she couldn't even say if the houses had cellars or not. Why, it come out she never was in a real house that anybody lived in … only hotels. She hadn't got to know a single real person that b'longed there. Of course she never found out anything 'bout how they lived. Her mother was there, she said, and her aunt, and that Bilson family that comes to th' village summers, an the Goodriches an' the Phippses an' the … oh, sakes alive, you know that same old crowd that rides 'roun' here summers and thinks to be sociable by sayin' how nice an yellow your oats is blossomin'! You could go ten times 'roun' the world with them and know less 'bout what folks is like than when you started. When I heard 'bout them being there, I called Eben and Joel and Em'ly off and I says, 'Now, don't pester that poor do-less critter with questions any more. How much do the summer folks down to th' village know 'bout the way we live? Well, they burst out laughin', of course. 'Well, then,' I says, ''tis plain to be seen that all they do in winter is to go off to some foreign part and do the same as here, so I says to them, same's I said to you, Abby, a while back, that they'd better save their breath to cool their porridge. But it's awful solemn eatin' now, without a word spoke."
The other woman laughed. "Why, you don't have to talk 'bout foreign parts or else keep still, do ye?"
"Oh, it's just so 'bout everythin. We heard she'd been in Washington last winter, so Eben he brisked up and tried her on politics. Well, she'd never heard of direct primaries, they're raisin such a holler 'bout in York State; she didn't know what th' 'nsurgent senators are up to near as much as we did, and to judge by the way she looked, she'd only just barely heard of th' tariff." The word was pronounced with true New England reverence. "Then we tried bringin' up children, and lumberin' an' roads, an cookin', an' crops, an' stock, an' wages, an' schools, an gardenin , but we couldn't touch bottom nowhere. Never a word to be had out'n her. So we give up and now we just sit like stotin' bottles, an' eat—an' do our visitin' with each other odd minutes afterward."
"Why, she don't look to be half-witted," said the other.
"She ain't!" cried Mrs. Pritchard with emphasis. "She's got as good a headpiece, natchilly, as anybody. I remember her when she was a young one. It's the fool way they're brung up! Everythin' that's any fun or intrust, they hire somebody else to do it for 'em. Here she is a great strappin' woman of twenty-two or three, with nothing in the world to do but to traipse off 'cross the fields from mornin' to night—an' nobody to need her there nor here, nor anywhere. No wonder she looks peaked. Sometimes when I see her set and stare off, so sort o' dull and hopeless, I'm so sorry for her I could cry! Good land! I'd as 'lief hire somebody to chew my vittles for me and give me the dry cud to live off of, as do the way those kind of folks do."
The distant call of a steam-whistle, silvered by the great distance into a flute-like note, interrupted her. "That's the milk-train, whistling for the Millbrook crossin'," she said. "We must be thinkin' of goin' home before long. Where be those young ones?" She raised her voice in a call as unexpectedly strong and vibrant as her laugh. "Susie! Eddie! Did they answer? I'm gittin' that hard o' hearin' 'tis hard for me to make out."
"Yes, they hollered back," said the other. "An' I see 'em comin' through the pasture yonder. I guess they got their pails full by the way they carry 'em."
"That's good," said Mrs. Pritchard with satisfaction. "They can get twenty-five cents a quart hulled, off'n summer folks. They're savin up to help Joel go to Middletown College in the fall."
"They
