FullReads

This morning the two apple-trees were brave with flowers, the currant bushes looked alive, and the pumpkin seeds were in the ground. Harriet cast complacent glances in their direction from time to time, as she painfully dug her dandelion greens. She was a short, stoutly built old woman, with a large face coarsely wrinkled, with a suspicion of a stubble of beard on the square chin.

When her tin pan was filled to her satisfaction with the sprawling, spidery greens, and she was hobbling stiffly towards her sister on the door-step, she saw another woman standing before her with a basket in her hand.

“Good-morning, Harriet,” she said, in a loud, strident voice, as she drew near.”I’ve been frying some doughnuts, and I brought you over some warm.”

“I’ve been tellin’ her it was real good in her,” piped Charlotte from the door-step, with an anxious turn of her sightless face towards the sound of her sister’s footstep.

Harriet said nothing but a hoarse “Good-mornin’, Mis’ Simonds.”Then she took the bask
et in her hand, lifted the towel off the top, selected a doughnut, and deliberately tasted it.

“Tough,” said she.”I s’posed so. If there is anything I ‘spise on this airth it’s a tough doughnut.”

“Oh, Harriét!” said Charlotte, with a frightened look.

“They air tough,” said Harriet, with hoarse defiance, “and if there is anything I ‘spise on this airth it’s a tough doughnut.”

The woman whose benevolence and cookery were being thus ungratefully received only laughed. She was quite fleshy, and had a round, rosy, determined face.

“Well, Harriet,” said she, “I am sorry they are tough, but perhaps you had better take them out on a plate, and give my basket. You may be able to eat two or three of them if they are tough.”

“They air tough – turrible tough,” said Harriet, stubbornly; but she took the basket into the house and emptied it of its contents nevertheless.

“I suppose your roof leaked as bad as ever in that heavy rain day before yesterday?” said the visitor to Harriet, with an inquiring squint towards the mossy shingles, as she was about to leave with her empty basket.

“It was turrible,” replied Harriet, with crusty acquiescence – “turrible. We had to set pails an’ pans everywheres, an’ move the bed out.”

“Mr. Upton ought to fix it.”

“There ain’t any fix to it; the old ruff ain’t fit to nail new shingles on to; the hammerin’ would bring the whole thing down on our heads,” said Harriet, grimly.

“Well, I don’t know as it can be fixed, it’s so old. I suppose the wind comes in bad around the windows and doors too?”

“It’s like livin’ with a piece of paper, or mebbe a sieve, ‘twixt you an’ the wind an’ the rain,” quoth Harriet, with a jerk of her head.

“You ought to have a more comfortable home in your old age,” said the visitor, thoughtfully.

“Oh, it’s well enough,” cried Harriet, in quick alarm, and with a complete change of tones; the woman’s remark had brought an old dread over her.”The old house’ll last as long as Charlotte an’ me do. The rain ain’t so bad, nuther is the wind; there’s room enough for us in the dry places, an’ out of the way of the doors an’ windows. It’s enough sight better than goin’ on the town.”Her square, defiant old face actually looked pale as she uttered the last words and stared apprehensively at the woman.

“Oh, I did not think of your doing that,” she said, hastily and kindly.”We all know how you feel about that, Harriet, and not one of us neighbors will see you and Charlotte go to the poorhouse while we’ve got a crust of bread to share with you.”