"Oh, I mean the Cinderella kind; I'd hate to think you told fibs."
"I can tell 'em, but I guess I don't care to. I know two or three of the other kind and Bible stories, some of them: Eli and Samuel, and David and Goliath, and all those."
"Do you go to school?"
"Half the year, but I guess I won't be going very much longer. I'll soon be going on fourteen; I'll stop when I'm fifteen."
"Oh, shall you? Then what will you do?"
"I'll learn to housekeep and cook, and to sew and all that. Mrs. Willis says it is more important for me to be educated in the useful things, that I'll get along better if I am, and I guess she is right. My mother couldn't cook worth a cent and she just hated it, so we didn't get very good vittles."
"Was it your mother's mother after whom you were named?"
"No, my father's mother. The Fairmans lived around here, but there ain't many of them left now. My father was an only child, and he married my mother out of town; she hadn't ever been used to the country. She used to work in a store and that's why she couldn't cook, you see."
Edna pondered over this information, wondering if everyone who worked in a store must necessarily turn out a poor cook.
"You ought just to see what's getting ready for Thanksgiving," said Reliance, changing the subject, "I never seen such a pile of stuff. It fair makes my mouth water to think of it; pies and cakes and doughnuts and jellies and I don't know what all. I guess there's as many as twenty or thirty coming, ain't there?"