"I don't know about that! I've only been in town half an hour and I've seen a water farm and a lady that runs it to the Queen's taste!"
Jenny laughed again; the sweetest, most tuneful laugh in the world; one that she seldom used nowadays but had kept over from her long-ago youth. What a droll stranger! And how much more interesting he would be in the intervals of sawing and splitting wood, than old George Gibson.
"It is too ridiculous that you should have seen the milk pans and noticed the shingles. I am going to have the roof fixed next spring if I live. Father saved up money for the stock but—but, I had to use it in a long illness."
"Yes, yes!" interrupted the stranger. "It beats all how that runs through life! You save up money for shingles and then you can't get enough more to put 'em on."
"I'm nearly ready for the second time," Jenny's tone was cheerful and incisive, "but I don't think I have quite enough to pay for labor. Besides, you couldn't, I mean you wouldn't—shingle—could you?"
"Sure I would, and could! You're strong on the subjunctive, aren't you? You've noticed I'm handicapped (I don't have to invent a word, it's all right for my case!). But just you wait and see what I can do with the substitute presented me by the U.S.A.! I'm going to have something more stylish later on, but I don't believe it will serve me any better; you see it's only my left arm!"
Jenny stopped her ears.
"Don't tell me you've read 'Pollyanna' and are glad it isn't your right arm!"
"Sure I'm glad! Who wouldn't be? Who's Pollyanna?"
"She's a girl in a book who's always glad that things aren't any worse."