tongue still and your hands busy."

Whatever possibilities there may be for the Ethiopian or the leopard, there
was no hope that Mrs. Mumpson would materially change any of her
characteristics. The chief reason was that she had no desire to change. A
more self-complacent person did not exist in Oakville. Good traits in other
people did not interest her. They were insipid, they lacked a certain
pungency which a dash of evil imparts; and in the course of her minute
investigations she had discerned or surmised so much that was reprehensible
that she had come to regard herself as singularly free from sins of omission
and commission. "What have I ever done?" she would ask in her self-communings.
The question implied so much truth of a certain kind that all her relatives
were in gall and bitterness as they remembered the weary months during which
she had rocked idly at their firesides. With her, talking was as much of a
necessity as breathing; but during the ride to the hillside farm she, in a
sense, held her breath, for a keen March wind was blowing.

She was so quiet that Holcroft grew hopeful, not realizing that the checked
flow of words must have freer course later on. A cloudy twilight was
deepening fast when they reached the dwelling. Holcroft's market wagon served
for the general purposes of conveyance, and he drove as near as possible to
the kitchen door. Descending from the front seat, which he had occupied
alone, he turned and offered his hand to assist the widow to alight, but she
nervously poised herself on the edge of the vehicle and seemed to be afraid to
venture. The wind fluttered her scanty draperies, causing her to appear like
a bird of prey about to swoop down upon the unprotected man. "I'm afraid to
jump so far--" she began.

"There's the step, Mrs. Mumpson."