"Whose seat be I goin' to set in?" inquired Nance, rebelliously, yet
with a certain air of capitulation.

"You can sit in mine. Haven't you sat there for the last five years?
Now, Nancy, don't hinder me!"

"Plague take it, then! I'll go!"

At this expected climax, Dorcas stood aside, and allowed her visitor to
serve herself with beans. When Nance's first hunger had been satisfied,
she began a rambling monologue, of an accustomed sort to which Dorcas
never listened.

"I went down to peek into the Poorhouse winders, this mornin'. There
they all sut, like rats in a trap. 'Got ye, 'ain't they?' says I. Old
Sal Flint she looked up, an' if there'd been a butcher-knife handy, I
guess she'd ha' throwed it. 'It's that Injun!' says she to Mis' Giles.
'Don't you take no notice!' 'I dunno's I'm an Injun,' says I, 'I dunno
how much Injun I be. I can't look so fur back as that. I dunno's
there's any more Injun in me than there is devil in you!' I says. An'
then the overseer he come out, an' driv' me off. 'You won't git me in
there,' says I to him, 'not so long's I've got my teeth to chaw
sassafras, an' my claws to dig me a holler in the ground!' But when I
come along, he passed me on the road, an' old Sal Flint sut up by him
on the seat, like a bump on a log. I guess he was carryin' her over to
that Pope-o'-Rome meetin' they've got over to Sudleigh."

Dorcas turned about, in anxious interest.

"Oh, I wonder if he was! How _can_ folks give up their own meeting for