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A Mountain Woman by Elia W. (Elia Wilkinson) Peattie
page 43 of 228 (18%)

"Old woman? Why, she ain't a day over
thirty, Mis' Dundy ain't."

Annie looked at her husband blankly.
But he was already talking of something
else, and she asked no more about the
woman, though all the way along the road
the face seemed to follow her. It might
have been this that caused the tightening
about her heart. For some way her vivacity
had gone; and the rest of the ride she asked
no questions, but sat looking straight before
her at the northward stretching road, with
eyes that felt rather than saw the brown,
bare undulations, rising every now and then
clean to the sky; at the side, little famished-
looking houses, unacquainted with paint,
disorderly yards, and endless reaches of
furrowed ground, where in summer the corn
had waved.

The horses needed no indication of the
line to make them turn up a smooth bit of
road that curved away neatly 'mid the ragged
grasses. At the end of it, in a clump of
puny scrub oaks, stood a square little house,
in uncorniced simplicity, with blank, uncur-
tained windows staring out at Annie, and for
a moment her eyes, blurred with the cold,
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