The women were silenced. But Isabel opened her bundle and exhibited the things she had brought for the baby, and asked if she might give it a warm bath and dress it up.
Phronie immediately set things going. Two of the boys were ordered to chop wood and make up again the fire under the big kettle, another to draw water from the well; one of the little girls ran for the family towel, another for the soft soap, another for the dishpan. And there, under the apple tree, in the dishpan, Isabel gave the poor little skeleton baby the first comfortable bath it had ever had in its life, drying it afterward, not with the soiled, stiff family towel, but with one of the soft rags she had brought. She bathed it, all but its head—for on this point granny and Phronie were adamant. To wash a babe's head, or leave off its cap, under a year, was certain death. "And I love my child too good to run ary risk," said Phronie. The best Isabel could do was to put the clean cap on the dirty little head.
The small creature looked up at her gratefully out of its age-old eyes, and rewarded her by going to sleep in her arms.
Phronie insisted that the women should stay to supper, the afternoon being about gone. They had brought sandwiches with them in case of a late return, but accepted her invitation.
Four or five of the children then ran down a chicken, which Phronie killed and fried. She also warmed up a pot of string beans, and made biscuits and coffee, and the visitors sat down to a plentiful supper, occupying the three chairs, while Ben, Phronie's husband, sat on the churn, and the nine children, not greedy and grabbing as most would have been, but always quiet and "civil," stood and ate. The women felt it to be a shame that such well-behaved and apparently bright children should be six miles away from a schoolhouse, and entirely cut off from opportunity.
When the guests were ready to start home, Phronie said there was a "nigher" way for them to return by than the one they had taken coming—that the walk might be shortened two miles by going along the ridge-tops. This idea appealed—they knew it could not get very dark, because the full moon would be rising too soon. So Ben took them up the mountain in the rear, and a short way along the ridge, leaving them with the directions: "All you got to do is to keep to the main ridge, whichever way hit winds, and not turn off on no spur; and hit'll fetch you right out over them cloth houses of yourn. And there hain't no varmints to bother you, less'n hit is a few rattlesnakes, which, if you don't step on 'em, won't do you no harm."
The sun had long since set, but they went along in the clear evening light, with an exhilarating view of other ridges stretching off on every side. Along the ridge-top was a narrow, hard-rock formation, which had resisted the wear and tear of ages, and which made a good, clear path, and lifted them pretty well above the timber, save where a great yellow poplar thrust its giant head up, here and there. In the narrow valleys below, mist was already gathering. Pale stars came out, and steadily brightened; but the women walked on in the dusk, unafraid.
At last, after they had gone on for an hour, Virginia exclaimed: "I think I know where we are now. To the right is the valley of Troublesome, and the land below us must be Fallon's, where Fult and his friends are getting out timber. And oh, there's the flush in the east where the moon is rising!"
An instant later, Isabel exclaimed, "Isn't that a light down in the timber just ahead of us?"
"Yes, it certainly is; probably Fult and the boys are having a 'possum hunt."