Margaret bowed to her. "Well, I'm mighty glad to hear it. So many folks are hard to please. There come a woman from away off yander sometime ago and took up over at Fetterson's and they couldn't do a thing to please her—grumbled all the time; the water wasn't even good, when heaven knows we've got the best water on the yeth. So I am glad you ain't hard to please."
"Oh, I should indeed be finical to find fault with anything in this delicious air," said Mrs. Mayfield, smiling at Lou, "this new life, among these God-worshipping hills, these—"
"Oh, auntie brought her romance with her," Tom broke in, and Lou gave him a look of tender reproof.
"Oh, let her talk, please. I like to hear her." And standing beside Mrs. Mayfield's chair she said: "You told me you were something. What was it?"
"An echo from the world," the city woman answered.
Lou looked at her mother who in turn gave her a look in which the girl read an ignorance as profound as her own. "Well, is sounds mighty putty," she said, "but what do you mean by it. I don't understand."
"Why Lou!" exclaimed her mother. "You musn't talk that way."
"Oh, let her go ahead," Tom spoke up. "The fact is auntie says a good many things I'd like to have explained to me."
"Tom," she said, "please don't be any more wayward than you can help."
At this moment old Jasper's voice was heard without. "Git down from here. Got less sense than any dog I ever seed, come a jumpin' on me with yo' muddy feet. Howdy everybody, howdy," he greeted them as he entered, with a set of harness on his arm. Every one spoke to him and after surveying the party he drew a chair out from the table, sat down and began to tug at the harness, pulling hard against the resistance of a rusty buckle. "Whar's that luther string?" he inquired of his wife.