Mrs. Barnard put up her apron and began to weep helplessly.

"Don't, mother," said Charlotte, in an undertone. But her mother
began talking in a piteous wailing fashion.

"You hadn't ought to talk so about Cephas," she moaned. "He's my
husband. I guess you wouldn't like it if anybody talked so about your
husband. Cephas ain't any worse than anybody else. It's jest his way.
He wa'n't any more to blame than Barney; they both got to talkin'. I
know Cephas is terrible upset about it this mornin'; he 'ain't really
said so in so many words, but I know by the way he acts. He said this
mornin' that he didn't know but we were eatin' the wrong kind of
food. Lately he's had an idea that mebbe we'd ought to eat more meat;
he's thought it was more strengthenin', an' we'd ought to eat things
as near like what we wanted to strengthen as could be. I've made a
good deal of bone soup. But now he says he thinks mebbe he's been
mistaken, an' animal food kind of quickens the animal nature in us,
an' that we'd better eat green things an' garden sass."

"I guess garden sass will strengthen the other kind of sass that
Cephas Barnard has got in him full as much as bone soup has,"
interrupted Hannah Berry, with a sarcastic sniff.

"I dunno but he's right," said Mrs. Barnard. "Cephas thinks a good
deal an' looks into things. I kind of wish he'd waited till the
garden had got started, though, for there ain't much we can eat now
but potatoes an' turnips an' dandelion greens."

"If you want to live on potatoes an' turnips an' dandelion greens,