Nance Pete (in other words, Nancy the wife of Pete, whose surname was unknown) clumped into the room, and took a chair by the hearth. She drew forth a short black pipe, looked into it discontentedly, and then sat putting her thumb in and out of the bowl.
"You 'ain't got a mite o' terbacker about ye? Hey what?" she asked.
Dorcas had many a time been shocked at the same demand. This morning, something humorous about it struck her, and she laughed.
"You know I haven't, Nancy Pete! Did you mend that hole in your skirt, as I told you?"
Nance laboriously drew a back breadth of her coarse plaid skirt round to the front, and displayed it, without a word. A three-cornered tear of the kind known as a barn-door had been treated by tying a white string well outside it, and gathering up the cloth, like a bag. Dorcas's sense of fitness forbade her to see anything humorous in so original a device. She stood before the woman in all the moral excellence of a censor fastidiously clad.
"O Nancy Pete!" she exclaimed. "How could you?"
Nance put her cold pipe in her mouth, and began sucking at the unresponsive stem.
"You 'ain't got a bite of anything t' eat, have ye?" she asked, indifferently.
Dorcas went to the pantry, and brought forth pie, doughnuts and cheese, and a dish of cold beans. The coffee-pot was waiting on the stove. One would have said the visitor had been expected. Nance rose and tramped over to the table. But Dorcas stood firmly in the way.
"No, Nancy, no! You wait a minute! Are you going to meeting to-day?"