talk about) that the Selectmen had told Mr. Dean, the superintendent,
that he could call at Dyer's Hotel--to which Nathaniel, peacefully
and pennilessly, had drifted--and take him out to the Farm.

"Sam Dyer says he'll keep him till next week," Mrs. Butterfield told
Lizzie Graham; "but, course, he can't just let him set down at the
hotel for the rest of his natural life. And Nat May would do it,
you know."

"I believe he would," Lizzie Graham admitted; "he was always kind of
simple that way, willin' to take and willin' to give. Don't you mind
how he used to be always sharin' anything he had? James used to say
Nat never knowed his own things belonged to him."

"Folks like that don't never get rich," Mrs. Butterfield said; "but
there! you like 'em."

The two women were walking down a stony hillside, each with a lard-pail
full of blueberries. It was a hot August afternoon; a northwest wind,
harsh and dry, tore fiercely across the scrub-pines and twinkling
birches of the sun-baked pastures. Lizzie Graham held on to her
sun-bonnet, and stopped in a scrap of shade under a meagre oak to
get breath.

"My! I don't like wind," she said, laughing.

"Let's set down a while," Mrs. Butterfield suggested.

"I'd just as leaves," Lizzie said, and took off her blue sunbonnet and
fanned herself. She was a pretty woman still, though she was nearly