"Some folks from down state have moved in,—renters, I take it."
"How do you know that?"
"From the look of the stuff Bailey's boy was hauling up there this morning.
It's travelled often."
"Mr. Short," Margaret explained merrily, "is the Grosvenor Times. His shop is the centre of our universe. From it he sees all that happens in our world—or his cronies tell him what he can't see. He knows what is going on in the remotest corner of the township,—what Hiram Bailey got for his potatoes, where Bill King sold his apples, whether Mrs. Beans's second son has gone to the Academy at White River. He knows the color and the power of every horse, the number of cows on every farm, the make of every wagon,—everything!"
"Not so bad as all that!" the blacksmith protested. It was evidently a family joke. "We don't gossip, do we, Jenny?"
"We don't gossip! But we keep our eyes open and tell what we see."
It was a pleasant, human sort of atmosphere. After the meal the two friends went back to Isabelle's couch and fire, Mrs. Short offering to put the youngest child to bed for Margaret.
"She likes to," Margaret explained. "Her daughter has gone away to college…. It is marvellous what that frail-looking woman can do; she does most of the cooking and housework, and never seems really busy. She prepared this daughter for college! She makes me ashamed of the little I accomplish,—and she reads, too, half a dozen magazines and all the stray books that come her way."
"But how can you stand it?" Isabelle asked bluntly; "I mean for months."
"Stand it? You mean the hours, the Strongs, Grosvenor? … Why, I feel positively afraid when I think that some day I may be shaken out of this nest! You will see. It is all so simple and easy, so human and natural, just like Mr. Short's day's work,—the same thing for thirty years, ever since he married the school teacher and took this house. You'll hear him building the fires to-morrow before daylight. He is at his shop at six-thirty, home at twelve, back again at one, milks the cow at five, and supper at six, bed at nine. Why, it's an Odyssey, that day,—as Mr. Short lives it!"