"She wouldn't notice," said Mrs. Ray, adjusting her shawl, and turning the needlework in her hands; "she's the kind who don't even see the things they go headlong over. She's the mooney kind. I know. Yes, indeed. Mr. Ray had mooney days. There were days when Mr. Ray called me by his first wife's name all day. Those were his mooney days."
"My cousin Eliza thinks she's crazy too. She says she's seen her time and again setting on stumps in the woods, and she turns out in the road for sparrows. And then that house. They're at it tooth and nail from dawn to dark. I never see nothing like it."
"Yes," said Mrs. Ray; "there's others say that, too. She is queer! Nellie says she often doesn't eat breakfast—nor any meat either. And she talks about the dam as if we was all heathens laying the axe at the root of our own mothers. She says all the trees ought to belong to the United States Government. As if we wasn't singing 'Pass under the rod of the Republican party' from dawn to dark now. Such a country!"
"She goes down to see Mr. Ledge, too," pursued Mrs. Catt; "of course he don't want the dam, and he makes her more so. Josiah Bates was driving home from Castile the other day, and he saw her coming from there. Josiah said he was sure she'd been to see Mr. Ledge, 'cause she wasn't ten feet from the house, and they was waving their hands to her from the window. You can always depend on Josiah Bates knowing what he's talking about."
"Yes," said Mrs. Ray, turning her work about; "yes, Josiah Bates is a very careful observer. He'll never die of no fish-bone in his throat for want of watching the fish."
"Speaking of fish-bones," said Mrs. Catt, "have you seen Lottie Ann Wiley lately? There's a bag of bones for you!"
"Not for a week or so. Why? Is she thinner than she was?"
"Thinner! Well, I should say so. I don't know what the Wileys will do with that girl if she keeps on getting thinner and paler."
"She isn't any paler than that girl at Nellie O'Neil's."
"Which one?"