Still she kept things together, sewing, crocheting, knitting, sending braided and drawn-in rugs to Boston, selling the butter from the one cow's milk and the hay from her eight-acre field.
She got "Pollyanna" from the village library and read it faithfully, but she was rebellious and it did her no good. She allowed to herself grudgingly that if she had lost a hand instead of a foot she couldn't have earned her living; but she never got to the point of being grateful that it was a foot, not a hand; she was unregenerate and wanted both.
It was late November now, and even at the end of the month there was a hint of Indian summer in the air, though a soft rain had been falling for many hours. Jenny's side-door stood open; there was a pale flicker of sun now and then and she was in the pantry wondering if she could venture to take away some of the milk pans that dotted the kitchen floor, all of them a third full of drippings from the ceiling.
She heard the swinging of the garden gate and a knock made her take her crutch and limp to the kitchen door.
A good-looking young man, fairly well clad, with his left sleeve hanging in a strange sort of stiffness, raised a shabby felt hat with his right hand and asked:
"Is this Miss Jenny Lane?"
"Yes, sir."
"They told me at the station you were minus a man and might have a few days' work for me."
"Everybody in Riverboro is minus a man, and everybody needs a little help. There's plenty to do here, for I live alone, but I have little money to spend on keeping up the place."
The young man glanced in at the door with a boyish sort of informality and asked: "Do you keep a dairy farm?"