"How nice you look!" said her mother appreciatively.
"I wish you could have seen her half an hour ago," announced Winnie from the doorway.
Her words were in direct opposition to her desire, for she went on to say that she had met Sarah as the latter came from the chicken yard.
"She was grease from head to foot," pronounced Winnie, while Sarah sat down on the rug and looked innocent. "You'd have thought, to look at her, that Mrs. Hildreth had been greasing her and not the chickens; there were feathers in her hair and dirt ground into her face and hands, and she must have been sitting in the dust pile where the chickens scratch. I had to give her a bath and change every stitch of her clothes, because I was afraid you wouldn't know her. And if dinner is late to-night, you can thank Sarah Baton Willis."
"I'll come set the table." offered Rosemary, jumping up.
As she laid the knives and forks, she told Winnie about her visit to Miss Clinton.
"I know her," declared Winnie, slicing bread—she had fastened back the communicating door between the kitchen and the dining-room. "At least I know of her; Mrs. Hildreth was telling me the other day. She's a woman who likes company—that's all she wants and all she doesn't get, summer times at least. I never saw a neighborhood like this one—I don't believe any of the farmers dare die in July or August for fear their friends couldn't stop farming long enough to come to the funeral."
Rosemary giggled.
"Is she poor, Winnie?" she asked with frank curiosity.
"My, no, not that I have heard tell of," answered Winnie. "She has an income of her own and plenty of relatives, scattered hereabouts. I believe a niece comes and stays with her during the winter months—her brother's daughter. Mrs. Hildreth was telling me that she writes hundreds of letters—though I guess she can't write as many as that—and she wheels herself out to the mail box and back in that chair and washes dishes and everything, sitting in it. But summers she gets fearfully lonesome. The neighbors run in a good deal in the winter and hold sewing-circle meetings there, but they haven't time to bother in the growing season."