Miss Moore went back to the house. A weather-beaten frame house it was, with a weather-vane in the shape of a horse on top. When the horse's nose pointed over Judith's window, the wind was east; when it seemed to gallop in the direction of the kitchen, it was west; when it made for the village, it was south, and when it looked with a longing eye, apparently, at the stables, it was north. Mr. Morris explained this to Judith on an average once a day, but she always got it mixed.
Mrs. Morris was vigorously making pies when Judith entered.
"Baking?" said Judith.
"Yes," said Mrs. Morris, breaking the crisp stalks of rhubarb into little pieces. "Yes, I'm sure I'm going to have company" (she broke the last piece of rhubarb with a snap and commenced rolling out her paste with soft thuds). "Yes, company's coming sure. I dropped my dishcloth three times this morning, and then the old brahma, he just stood on that doorstep and crowed for all he was worth. I never knowed that bird to crow on that doorstep without strange feet soon stood on it."
Mrs. Morris covered her pie, and then holding the pie plate upon the fingers of one hand, dexterously ran a knife around the edge, trimming off a ring of paste that fell on her arm; then she dabbed it with a fork and put it in the oven.
"I want something to put my flowers in," said Judith. "May I take some of those big earthen jars out there?" pointing to the open door of the pantry, within which stood some old-fashioned, rough, grey crocks.
"Yes," said Mrs. Morris, absent-mindedly, as she carefully "tried" a cake with a straw from the broom to see if it was done; "yes"—then coming back to sublunary matters as she shut the oven door, "But sake's alive, child, you don't want them things to put them in! I'll get you the scissors and some string so you can cut the blows off them apple branches and make good round bunches, and there's some posy pots I bought in town one day. I'll get them to put them in."
Judith's heart sank. She was too afraid of hurting Mrs. Morris' feelings to say anything, but when that busy woman appeared with some hideous blue and green and gilt atrocities, a bright thought struck her.
"Oh, Mrs. Morris," she said, "those are too nice altogether. Just let me use the jars; those might get broken."
"Well," said Mrs. Morris, pausing in the door of the sitting-room, "they be only wild crabs and dogwood blows. It would be a pity to risk it, maybe." So she took back the vases and replaced the bouquets of everlastings in them, feeling she had done her duty to her boarder, but glad that matters had arranged themselves as they had.