bushes?"

"Yes! And a very pretty-appearing girl; about thi'teen or fou'teen, I
should think."

The farmer pulled his fork out of the ground, and planted it with his
person at new slopes in the figure of a letter A, rather more upright
than before. "Yes; it's them," he said. "Ha'n't been in the neighbahood a
great while, eitha. Up from down Po'tland way, some'res, I guess. Built
that house last summer, as far as it's got, but I don't believe it's
goin' to git much fa'tha."

"Why, what's the matta?" demanded Mrs. Lander in an anguish of interest.

The man in the hay-field seemed to think it more dignified to include
Lander in this inquiry, and he said with a glimmer of the eye for him,
"Hea'd of do-nothin' folks?"

"Seen 'em, too," answered Lander, comprehensively.

"Well, that a'n't Claxon's complaint exactly. He a'n't a do-nothin'; he's
a do-everything. I guess it's about as bad." Lander glimmered back at the
man, but did not speak.

"Kind of a machinist down at the Mills, where he come from," the farmer
began again, and Mrs. Lander, eager not to be left out of the affair for
a moment, interrupted:

"Yes, Yes! That's what the gul said."