"This is a nice cool place--completely curtained with vines," said Mrs. Troost; and she sighed again. "They must have cost you a great deal of pains."
"O, no! no trouble at all; morning-glories grow themselves; they only require to be planted. I will save seed for you this Fall, and next Summer you can have your porch as shady as mine."
"And if I do, it would not signify," said Mrs. Troost; "I never get time to sit down from one week's end to another; besides, I never had any luck with vines. Some folks don't, you know."
Mrs. Hill was a woman of a short, plethoric habit; one that might be supposed to move about with little agility, and to find excessive warmth rather inconvenient; but she was of a happy, cheerful temperament; and when it rained she tucked up her skirts, put on thick shoes, and waddled about the same as ever, saying to herself, "This will make the grass grow," or, "It will bring on the radishes," or something else equally consolatory.
Mrs. Troost, on the contrary, was a little thin woman, who looked as though she could move about nimbly at any .season; but, as she herself often said, she was a poor, unfortunate creature, and pitied herself a great deal, as she was in justice bound to do, for nobody else cared, she said, how much she had to bear.
They were near neighbors, these good women, but their social interchanges of tea-drinking were not of very frequent occurrence, for sometimes Mrs. Troost had nothing to wear like other folks; sometimes it was too hot and sometimes it was too cold; and then, again, nobody wanted to see her, and she was sure she didn't want to go where she wasn't wanted. Moreover, she had such a great barn of a house as no other woman ever had to take care of. But in all the neighborhood it was called the big house, so Mrs. Troost was in some measure compensated for the pains it cost her. It was, however, as she said, a barn of a place, with half the rooms unfurnished, partly because they had no use for them, and partly because they were unable to get furniture. So it stood right in the sun, with no shutters, and no trees about it, and Mrs. Troost said she didn't suppose it ever would have. She was always opposed to building it; but she never had her way about any thing. Nevertheless, some people said Mr. Troost had taken the dimensions of his house with his wife's apron-strings--but that may have been slander.
While Mrs. Troost sat sighing over things in general, Mrs. Hill sewed on the last button, and, shaking the loose threads from the completed garment, held it up a moment to take a satisfactory view, as it were, and folded it away.
"Well, did you ever!" said Mrs. Troost. "You have made half a shirt, and I have got nothing at all done. My hands sweat so I can not use the needle, and it's no use to try."
"Lay down your work for a little while, and we will walk in the garden."
So Mrs. Hill threw a towel over her head, and, taking a little tin basin in her hand, the two went to the garden--Mrs. Troost under the shelter of the blue umbrella, which she said was so heavy that it was worse than nothing. Beans, radishes, raspberries, and currants, besides many other things, were there in profusion, and Mrs. Troost said every thing flourished for Mrs. Hill, while her garden was all choked up with weeds. "And you have bees, too--don't they sting the children, and give you a great deal of trouble? Along in May, I guess it was, Troost [Mrs. Troost always called her husband so] bought a hive, or, rather, he traded a calf for one--a nice, likely calf, too, it was--and they never did us a bit of good;" and the unhappy woman sighed.