“Why did you quit?”
“Me, I likes peace—tha’s why! I couldn’ stand it no mo’ to be stayin’ in a house whar they’s always so much quollin’ goin’ on.”
Now the Joneses were friends of Mrs. Smith, and, to her always, they had seemed a happy couple, ideally mated. Naturally this disclosure shocked her greatly. She hardly could believe it. Still, she shared with the rest of us an almost universal trait—she had a natural curiosity. If the household of her neighbors was rent by internal dissensions here was a chance to find out the true state of affairs.
“Do you mean to tell me that Mr. and Mrs. Jones have been quarreling?”
“Yassum. All de two months I stayed there they was quollin’ constant.”
“What did they quarrel about?”
“Diffunt things, ever’ day. Ef ’twasn’t Mrs. Jones quollin’ wid me ’bout somethin’ or other I’d done, ’twas Mr. Jones.”
§ 145 An Exception for a Native Son
The clannishness of the rural Vermonter is proverbial. In illustration of this trait a distinguished citizen of the Green Mountain state told me a story. He said that on a rather cloudy day a typical group of natives sat on the porch of the main general store in a town on the shores of Lake Champlain. Among them appeared a youth citified as to dress and having rather an air of assurance about him. In silent disapproval the company took in his belted coat, his knickerbockers and golf stockings and, most disapprovingly of all, the confident manner of the alien.
“Good morning, everybody,” he said breezily.