“Not very far away,” returned Mrs. Fabian. “We are out on a pleasure jaunt this morning, but I saw your farm and so we decided to ask your little girl if you were in.”
“That’s right! I tole my man to put a sign out on the letter-box fer passers-by to see how I had aigs to sell; but he is that procrastinatin’—he puts off anythun’ ’til it’s too late.”
The woman was scraping the bits of dough from her hands as she spoke, and this done, she sprinkled flour over the top of the soft lump in the pan and covered it with a piece of old linen cloth. As she took it to a warm corner behind the stove, she added: “Do you’se know! Abe was late fer our weddin’. But I knew him for procrastinatin’, even in them days, so I made everyone wait. He come in an ’nour behind time, sayin’ he had to walk from his place ’cause his horse was too lame to ride. That’s Abe all over, in everythun.”
The house-keeper finished her task and turned to her callers. “Now then! Do yuh like white er brown aigs?”
“White ones, please,” returned Mrs. Fabian.
The woman went to the large storeroom off the kitchen and counted out a dozen eggs in a box. When she came back she held them in one hand while waiting for payment, with outstretched other hand.
“That’s a fine sofa you’ve got in the next room,” remarked Mrs. Fabian, pretending not to notice the open palm.
“Yeh, d’ye know, I paid fifteen dollars jus’ fer that red plush alone?” declared she, going to the door and turning to invite her visitors to come in. The box of eggs was forgotten for the time.
The girls followed Mrs. Fabian to the best room that opened from the large kitchen, and to their horror they saw that the sofa referred to was a hideous Victorian affair of walnut frame upholstered in awful red mohair plush.
But Mrs. Fabian made the most of her optics the moment she got inside the room. Thus it happened that she spied a few little ornaments on the old mantel-shelf.