"Yes, hit's pyeert every way; I hain't seed hit for a year or two without a chaw in hit's jaw. And liquor! Hit's a sight the way that young-un can drink. Fulty and t'other boys they jest load him up, to see the quare things he'll do."
At this moment the little kindergartners were dismissed, and marched, as decorously as they were able, down the hill after their teacher, followed by all the onlookers. The tents were discharging their crowds, too, and Aunt Ailsie recognized several more of her grandchildren on the way down.
Arrived at the lowest tent. Aunt Ailsie presented her baskets of apples and eggs to the women. A dozen or more elderly folk, and as many young girls who were deeply interested in learning "furrin" cooking, remained to dinner. The rest of the strange women, Amy, the kindergartner, the cooking teacher and the nurse, Aunt Ailsie now met, putting to each the inevitable questions as to name, age, and condition of life. As each smilingly replied that she had no man, a cloud of real distress gathered on Aunt Ailsie's brow, which not all the novel accompaniments of the meal could entirely banish.
Afterward, when the dishes were washed and all sat around in groups under the trees, resting, she said confidentially to Virginia:—
"I am plumb tore up in my mind over you women, five of you, and as good-lookers as ever I beheld, and with sech nice, common ways, too, not having no man. Hit hain't noways reasonable. Maybe the men in your country does a sight of fighting, like ourn, and has been mostly kilt off?"
"No, we have no feuds or fighting down there—there are plenty of men."
"Well, what's wrong with 'em, then? Hain't they got no feelings—to let sech a passel of gals get past 'em? That-air cook, now,—her you call Annetty, with the blue eyes and crow's-wing hair, and not but twenty-three; now what do you think about men-folks that would let her live single?"
"Maybe they can't help themselves," laughed Virginia; "maybe she doesn't want to marry."
"Not want to marry? Everybody does, don't they?"
"Did you?"