melted first there on the freedom days of the year. The new editor of
the Sudleigh "Star," seeing her slight, wiry figure struggling with the
bed like a very little ant under a caterpillar all too large, was once
on the point of drawing up his horse at her gate. He was a chivalrous
fellow, and he wanted to help; but Brad Freeman, hulking by with his
gun at the moment, stopped him.

"That's only Dilly wrastlin' with, her bed," he called back, in the act
of stepping over the wall into the meadow. "'Twon't do no good to take
holt once, unless you're round here every mornin' 'bout the same time.
Dilly'll git the better on't. She al'ays does." So the editor laughed,
put down another Tiverton custom in his mental notebook, and drove on.

Dilly was a very little woman, with abnormally long and sinewy arms.
Her small, rather delicate face had a healthy coat of tan, and her
iron-gray hair was braided with scrupulous care. She resembled her own
house to a striking degree; she was fastidiously neat, but not in the
least orderly. The Tiverton housekeepers could not appreciate this
attitude in reference to the conventional world. It was all very well
to keep the kitchen floor scrubbed, but they did believe, also, in
seeing the table properly set, and in finishing the washing by eight
o'clock on Monday morning. Now Dilly seldom felt inclined to set any
table at all. She was far more likely to take her bread and milk under
a tree; and as for washing, Thursday was as good a day as any, she was
wont to declare. Moreover, the tradition of hanging garments on the
line according to a severely classified system, did not in the least
appeal to her.

"I guess a petticoat'll dry jest as quick if it's hung 'side of a
nightgown," she told her critics, drily. "An' when you come to hangin'