"A deacon. Mine went to his grave too soon."
"They said down at market to-day, Mrs. Scogin, that Addie Fitton knocked herself against the woodbin and has water on the knee."
"Let the town once label a man with drinkin', and it's hard to get justice for him."
"It took Martha and Eda and Gessler's hired girl to hold her in bed with the pain."
"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Scogin, sucking in her words and her eyes seeming to strain through the present; "once label a man with drinkin'."
Kittie Scogin Bevins entered then through a rain of bead portières. Insistently blond, her loosed-out hair newly dry and flowing down over a very spotted and very baby-blue kimono, there was something soft-fleshed about her, a not unappealing saddle of freckles across her nose, the eyes too light but set in with a certain feline arch to them.
"Hello, Han!"
"Hello, Kittie!"
"Snowing?"
"No."