"Perhaps," repeated Mrs. Gass, sarcastically. "It's to be hoped they will, for your sake. Jelly, I wouldn't stand in your shoes to be made a queen tomorrow."
"I wouldn't stand in somebody else's," returned Jelly, irritated into the avowal. "I shall have pretty good proof at hand, if I'm forced to bring it out."
"What proof?"
"Well, I'd rather not say. You'd only ridicule it, Mrs. Gass, and blow me up into the bargain. I must be going."
"I guess it's moonshine, Jelly--like the ghost you saw. Good-morning."
Jelly went away with a hard and anything but a happy look, and Mrs. Gass resumed her seat again. Very shortly there came creeping by, following the same direction as Jelly, a poor shivering woman, with a ragged shawl on her thin shoulders, and a white, pinched, hopeless face.
"Is that you, Susan Ketler?"
Susan Ketler turned and dropped a curtsy. Some of the women of North Inlet were even worse off than she was. She did have help now and then from Jelly.
"Yes, ma'am, it's me."
"How long do you think you North Inlet people will be able to keep going--as things be at present?" demanded Mrs. Gass.