There was so long a silence that the girl inside the house wondered if they were gone, when Mrs. Pritchard's voice began again: "I do like to come up here! It 'minds me of him an' me livin' here when we was young. We had a good time of it!"
"I never could see," commented the other, "how you managed when he went away t' th' war."
"Oh, I did the way you do when you have to! I'd felt he ought to go, you know, as much as he did, so I was willin' to put in my best licks. An' I was young too—twenty-three—and only two of the children born then—and I was as strong as a ox. I never minded the work any. 'Twas the days after battles, when we couldn't get no news, that was the bad part. Why, I could go to the very spot, over there where the butternut tree stands—'twas our garden then—where I heard he was killed at Gettysburg."
"What did you do?" asked the other.
"I went on hoein' my beans. There was the two children to be looked out for, you know. But I ain't mindin' tellin' you that I can't look at a bean-row since without gettin' sick to my stomach and feelin' the goose-pimples start all over me."
"How did you hear 'twan't so?"
"Why, I was gettin' in the hay—up there where the oaks stand was our hay-field. I remember how sick the smell of the hay made me, and when the sweat run down into my eyes I was glad to feel 'em smart and sting—well, Abby, you just wait till you hear your Nathan'l is shot through the head and you'll know how it was—well, all of a sudden—somebody took the fork out'n my hand an'—an' said—'here, you drive an' I'll pitch '—and there—'twas—'twas——"
"Why, Grandma Pritchard! You're——"
"No, I ain't, either; I ain't such a fool, I hope! Why, see me cry like a old numskull! Ain't it ridic'lous how you can talk 'bout deaths and buryin's all right, and can't tell of how somebody come back from the grave without—where in th' nation is my handkerchief! Why, Abby, things ain't never looked the same to me from that minute on. I tell you—I tell you—I was real glad to see him!
"Good land, what time o' day do you suppose it can be? Susie! Eddie! Come, git your berries and start home!"