"If you can get her moved out of Grumble Street and into Thanksgiving Alley," he said, "it'll be a privilege for this village; but you can't do it, Anne. However, there's no use talking to you, you incorrigible optimist. You're the worst case I ever saw, Anne Peace, and I haven't the smallest hope of curing you. Put the liniment on her leg as I told you, and I'll call in the morning. Good day!"
"My goodness me, what was he saying to you?" Mrs. Means asked as Anne went back into the bedroom. "You've got something that you'll never get well of? Well, Anne Peace, that does seem the cap sheaf on the hull. Heart complaint, I s'pose it is; and what would become of me, if you was to be struck down, as you might be any minute of time, and me helpless here, and a husband and four children at home and he failin' up. You did look dretful gashly round the mouth yisterday, I noticed it at the time, but of course I didn't speak of it. Why, here I should lay, and might starve to death, and you cold on the floor, for all the help I should get." Mrs. Means shed tears, and Anne Peace answered with as near an approach to asperity as her soft voice could command.
"Don't talk foolishness, Delia. I'm not cold yet, nor likely to be. Here, let me 'tend to your leg; it's time I was getting dinner on this minute."
It continued to rain on the picnic day; no uncertain showers, to keep up a chill and fever of fear and hope among the young people, but a good, honest downpour, which everybody past twenty must recognize as being just the thing the country needed. Jenny Miller came in, smiling all over, though she professed herself "real sorry for them as was disappointed." "Tudie Peaslee sat down and cried, when she saw 'twas rainin'," she said, as she prepared to give her dress the final trying-on. "There, Miss Peace. I did try to feel for her, but I just couldn't, seems though. Oh, ain't that handsome? that little puff is too cute for anything! I do think you've been smart, Miss Peace. Not that you ever was anything else."
"You've a real easy figure to fit, Jenny," Miss Peace replied, modestly. "I guess that's half the smartness of it. It doos set good, though, I'm free to think. The styles is real pretty this summer, anyhow. Don't that set good, Delia?"
She turned to Mrs. Means, who was lying on the sofa (they call it a l'unge in Cyrus), watching the trying-on with keenly critical eyes.
"Ye-es," she said. "The back sets good enough, but 'pears to me there's a wrinkle about the neck that I shouldn't like to see in any work of mine. I've always ben too particklar, though; it's time thrown away, but I can't bear to send a thing out 'cept jest as it should be."
"It don't wrinkle, Mis' Means!" cried Jenny, indignantly. "Not a mite. I was turning round to look at the back of the skirt, and that pulled it; there ain't a sign of a wrinkle, Miss Peace, so don't you think there is."
Mrs. Means sniffed, and said something about the change in young folks' manners since she was a girl. "If I'd ha' spoke so to my elders—I won't say betters, for folks ain't thought much of when they have to sew for a livin', with a husband and four children to keer for—I guess I should ha' found it out in pretty quick time."
"Hi-hi!" said Miss Peace, soothingly. "There, Delia, Jenny didn't mean anything. Jenny, I guess I'll have to take you into the bedroom, so's I can pull this skirt out a little further. This room doos get so cluttered with all my things round." She hustled Jenny, swelling like an angry partridge, into the next room, and closed the door carefully.