an' then I couldn't ha' made him hear."

"I dunno what to say, nor what not to," remarked Miss Dyer, to her
corner. "If I speak, I'm to blame; an' so I be if I keep still."

The other old lady had thrown herself into a chair, and was looking
wrathfully before her.

"It's the same man that come from Sudleigh last August," she said,
bitterly. "He took the house then, an' said he wanted another view when
the leaves was off; an' that time I was laid up with my stiff ankle,
an' didn't git into it, an' to-day my bunnit was hid, an' I lost it
ag'in."

Her voice changed. To the listener, it took on an awful meaning.

"An' I should like to know whose fault it was. If them that owns the
winder, an' set by it till they see him comin', had spoke up an' said,
'Mis' Blair, there's the photograph man. Don't you want to be took?' it
wouldn't ha' been too late! If anybody had answered a civil question,
an' said, 'Your bunnit-box sets there behind my blue chist,' it
wouldn't ha' been too late then! An' I 'ain't had my likeness took
sence I was twenty year old, an' went to Sudleigh Fair in my changeable
_visite_ an' leghorn hat, an' Jonathan wore the brocaded weskit he
stood up in, the next week Thursday. It's enough to make a minister
swear!"

Miss Dyer rocked back and forth.

"Dear me!" she wailed. "Dear me suz!"