"Tilly don't want to give; she'd ruther take," said Mrs. Baxter, before the other could answer. "She's like old Mis' Pepper. Seliny Hazlitt went over there, when she was fust married an' come to the neighborhood, an' asked her if she'd got a sieve to put squash through. Poor Seliny! she didn't know a sieve from a colander, in them days."
"I guess she found out soon enough," volunteered Mrs. Page. "He was one o' them kind o' men that can keep house as well as a woman. I'd ruther live with a born fool."
"Well, old Mis' Pepper she ris up an' smoothed down her apron (recollect them little dots she used to wear?—made her look as broad as a barn door!), an' she says, 'Yes, we've got a sieve for flour, an' a sieve for meal, an' a sieve for rye, an' a sieve for blue-monge, an' we could have a sieve for squash if we was a mind to, but I don't wish to lend.' That's the way with Tilly. She's terrible cropein' about news, but she won't lend."
"How's your cistern?" asked Mrs. John Cole, who, with an exclusively practical turn of mind, saw no reason why talk should be consecutive. "Got all the water you want?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Page; "that last rain filled it up higher'n it's been sence November."
But Mrs. Ellison was not to be thrown off the track.
"Ain't there been consid'able talk over here about Parson Bond?" she asked.
Miss Sally Ware, a plump and pleasing maiden lady, whose gold beads lay in a crease especially designed for them, stirred uneasily in her seat and gave her sisters an appealing glance. But she did not speak, beyond uttering a little dissentient noise in her throat. She was loyal to her minister. An embarrassed silence fell like a vapor over the assemblage. Everybody longed to talk; nobody wanted the responsibility of beginning. Mrs. Page was the first to gather her forces.
"Now, Tilly," said she, with decision, "you ain't comin' over here to tole us into haulin' our own pastor over the coals, unless you'll say right out you won't pass it on to Saltash folks. As for puttin' it in the paper, it ain't the kind you can."
Tilly's eyes burned.