there! you ain't a witch, as I be!"

"I wish you wouldn't say that!" put in Molly, courageously. "You make
people think you are."

"Law, then, let 'em!" said Dilly, with a kindly indulgence. "It don't
do them no hurt, an' it gives me more fun'n the county newspaper.
They'd ruther I'd say I was a witch'n tell 'em I've got four eyes an'
eight ears where they 'ain't but two. I tell ye, there's a good deal
missed when ye stay to home makin' pies, an' a good deal ye can learn
if ye live out-door. Why, there's Tolman's cows! He dunno why they dry
up; but I do. He, sends that little Davie with 'em, that don't have no
proper playtime; an' Davie gallops 'em all the way to pastur', so't he
can have a minute to fish in the brook. An' then he gallops 'em home
ag'in, because he's stole a piece out o' the arternoon. I ketched him
down there by the brook, one day, workin' away with a bent pin, an' the
next mornin' I laid a fish-hook on the rock, an' hid in the woods to
see what he'd say. My! I 'guess Jonah wa'n't more tickled when he set
foot on dry land. Here comes the wagons! There's the Poorhouse team
fust, an' Sally Flint settin' up straighter 'n a ramrod. An' there's
Heman an' Roxy! She don't look a day older'n twenty-five. Proper nice
folks, all on 'em, but they make me kind o' homesick jest because they
_be_ folks. They do look so sort o' common in their bunnits an' veils,
an' I keep thinkin' o' little four-legged creatur's, all fur!" The
Tiverton folk saluted them, always cordially, yet each after his kind.
They liked Dilly as a product all their own, but one to be partaken of
sparingly, like some wild, intoxicating root.

They loved her better at home, too, than at Sudleigh Fair. It was like
a betrayal of their fireside secrets, to see her there in her