“I don’t know. Jim won’t tell me a thing that goes on there. He says if there’s anything on top of the earth he absolutely despises it’s a gossiping man. He says a gossiping woman is a creation of God—must be, there’s so many of ’em; but a gossiping man—he can’t find any word in the dictionary mean enough for that sort of a low-down skunk.”
Ellen burst into hysterical laughter.
“What an idea!” she gasped. “Oh, but he’s almost too sweet to live, Fan. Somebody ought to take him down a peg or two. Fan, if he proposes to that girl, I hope she won’t have him. ’Twould serve him right!”
“Perhaps she won’t marry anybody around here,” mused Fanny. “Did you ever notice she wears a thin gold chain around her neck, Ellen?”
Ellen nodded.
“Perhaps there’s a picture of somebody on it.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
Ellen impatiently kicked a big apple out of her way, to the manifest discomfiture of two or three drunken wasps who were battening on the sweet juices.
“I’ve got to go back to the house,” she said. “Mother’ll be looking for me.”
“But, Ellen—”