some mettlesome horse which does not like to be balked by anything in
the shape of a wall.

Old Jonas Martin was a talker, and he talked freely about the people
for whom he worked. "Old Deacon Sears had a cow once that would jump
everything. Wa'n't a wall could be built that was high enough to stop
her," he would say. "'Tain't no ways clear to my mind that she ain't
the identical critter that jumped the moon;--and I swan if Mis'
Jameson ain't like her. There ain't nothin' that's goin' to stop her;
she ain't goin' to be hendered by any sech little things as times an'
seasons an' frost from raisin' corn an' green peas an' flowers in her
garden. 'The frost'll be a-nippin' of 'em, marm,' says I, 'as soon as
they come up, marm.' 'I wish you to leave that to me, my good man,'
says she. Law, she ain't a-goin' to hev any frost a-nippin' her
garden unless she's ready for it. And as for the chickens, I wouldn't
like to be in their shoes unless they hatch when Mis' Jameson she
wants 'em to. They have to do everything else she wants 'em to, and I
dunno but they'll come to time on that. They're the fust fowls I ever
see that a woman could stop scratchin'."

With that, old Jonas Martin would pause for a long cackle of mirth,
and his auditor would usually join him, for Mrs. Jameson's hens were
enough to awaken merriment, and no mistake. Louisa and I could never
see them without laughing enough to cry; and as for little Alice,
who, like most gentle, delicate children, was not often provoked to
immoderate laughter, she almost went into hysterics. We rather
dreaded to have her catch sight of the Jameson hens. There were
twenty of them, great, fat Plymouth Rocks, and every one of them in
shoes, which were made of pieces of thick cloth sewed into little
bags and tied firmly around the legs of the fowls, and they were