But the next time I went to town, friends began to smile mysteriously,
asked me if I had been out on the lake yet, made sly and jocose
allusions to a sudden change to Baptistic faith, and if I cordially
invited them to join me in a row, would declare a preference for surf
and salt water, or, if pressed, would murmur in the meanest way
something about having a bath-tub at home.

It is now nearly a year since that little adventure, but it is still a
subject of mirth, even in other towns. A friend calling yesterday told
me the version he had just heard at Gillford, ten miles away!

"You bet they have comical goings-on at that woman's farm by the
Gooseville depot! She got a regular menagerie, fust off--everything she
see or could hear of. Got sick o' the circus bizness, and went into
potatoes deep. They say she was actually up and outdoors by day-break,
working and worrying over the tater bugs!

"She's a red-headed, fleshy woman, and some of our folks going by in the
cars would tell of seeing her tramping up and down the long furrows,
with half a dozen boys hired to help her. Soon as she'd killed most of
her own, a million more just traveled over from the field opposite where
they had had their own way and cleaned out most everything. Then, what
the bugs spared, the long rains rotted. So I hear she's giv' up
potatoes.

"Then she got sot on scooping out a seven by nine mud hole to make a
pond, and had a boat built to match.

"Well, by darn, she took a stout woman in with her, and, as I heerd it,
that boat just giv' one groan, and sunk right down!"