"But that's just pure faking, isn't it?"
"I don't know whether 'tis or not. I don't understand it. My idea is, never to make too light of a thing that I don't understand."
"You don't think there is a Little Eva, do you, Grandma?"
"No, I don't, but Mis' Hawes does."
"I shouldn't think there was anything to do but laugh at Little Eva."
"So wouldn't anybody, first off, but spiritualism is some people's religion. It ain't mine, but in general it ain't a good idea to laugh at anybody's religion, not even the cannibals'."
"What shall we do about the Steppes, then?"
"I'm going to get Judidy's sister to go over there and stay what she can. What she can't, you and me and Judidy'll make up between us. We'll have a kind of general care of 'em till they get out o' this particular patch o' woods. Then they'll have to go on their own gait again."
"It does seem sort of awful, not to really do anything."
"Yes, it does, but the thing to do is to keep people like that in the back of your mind, and when any chance comes that might benefit 'em, not to be too lazy to pass it along. I'm kind of arguing with your grandfather about taking Moses to come and live with us. I ain't pushing the matter, but kind o' working along easy. I've got an idea of getting Mis' Steppe interested in a different class o' books. Any woman that'll get the notion out of a book that she can wear a eighteen-inch corset around her waist under her rags and stick to it can get some other more practical notion through her head in time. Anyhow, that's one thing to work on. I ain't very hopeful, but I thought of it. I keep at the Steppes, and little by little I hope to get something accomplished. I see that the children is fed up about once a day anyway, but I don't stick my wrist through the hole o' their shiftlessness, I just bail out a little water as often as I can."