that it was none of his fault that she didn't have the right clothes, and
that it was a pretty kind of a world that would keep a man from gettin'
on just because he was honest, and--

"Oh, shut up!" said Mrs. Snawdor, unfeelingly; "it ain't yer lack of
work that gits on my nerves; it's yer bein' 'round. I'd pay anybody a
quarter a week to keep yer busy!"

Nance, during this exchange of conjugal infelicities, assisted by Lobelia
and Fidy, was rescuing sufficient dishes from the kitchen sink to serve
for the evening meal. She, too, was finding it difficult to bring her
attention to bear on domestic matters after the exciting events of the
afternoon.

"An' he says to me,"--she was recounting with dramatic intensity to her
admiring audience--"he says, 'Keep offen that concrete.' An' I says,
'It'll take somebody bigger'n you to make me!'"

Now, of course, we know that Nance never said that, but it was what she
wished she had said, which, at certain moments in life, seems to the best
of us to be quite the same thing.

"Then what?" said Fidy, with a plate suspended in air.

"Then," said Nance with sparkling eyes, "I sticks my foot right in the
middle of their old concrete, an' they comes pilin' offen the fence, an'
Dan Lewis he--"

"You Nance!" came in warning tones from the other room, "you shet your
head an' git on with that supper. Here comes your Uncle Jed this minute!"