"Well, I wouldn't give up hope," said Mrs. Green. "It's my motto to carry hope right spang through the grave." She rose, fed the fire, and filled the tea-kettle, then returned to her rag carpet. "You're lookin' a little thin, child. Don't let them worry you up at the house."
"I'm not," answered Hagar sombrely. The light went out of her eyes. She stitched slowly, drawing her thread through with deliberation.
Mrs. Green again looked over her spectacles. "They're mighty fine folk, the Ashendynes," she said at last. "They've got old blood and pride for a dozen, and the settest heads! Ain't nothin' daunts them, neither Satan nor the Lord. They're goin' to run their own race.—You're more like your mother, but I wouldn't say you didn't have something of your grandfather in you at times. You've got a dash of Coltsworth, too."
"Haven't I anything of my father at all?"
Mrs. Green, leaning forward into the sunlight, threaded her needle. "I wouldn't be bitter about my father, if I were you. People can be born without a sense of obligation and responsibility just as they can be born without other senses. I suppose it's there somewhere, only, so many other things are atop, it ain't hardly ever stirred. Your father's right rich in other things."
"He's so poor he couldn't either truly love my mother or truly let her go.—But I didn't mean to talk about him," said Hagar. She laid the ball she had been winding in the basket with the other balls and stood up, stretching her young arms above her head. "Listen to the wind! I wish it would blow me away, neither north nor south nor east nor west!"
"Yes, you are like your mother," said Mrs. Green. "Have you got to go? Then will you take your grandmother's big knitting-needles back to her for me? And don't you want a winesap?—there's a basket of them behind the door."