Miss Sally Madeira, trying to make her way down Main Street one Saturday afternoon, in the early spring of the year 1900, had to go very slowly because of the country people in front of the Grange. Occasionally some of the farm-wives called to her shily. The road was noisy and dusty with the passing of mule-teams, buggies, buckboards, riders on horseback. Out of the continuous rattle a child's voice piped shrilly. The owner of the voice was a little girl who wore a hat with a bunch of cherries on it. She stood up in the bed of a farm-waggon and screamed at Miss Madeira, who at once made her way to the edge of the side-walk of broken bricks and waited for the little girl's waggon to come in to the curb. The waggon was full of children, but Miss Madeira was somehow able to call them all by name.
"He gimme fifty cents!" was what the cherry-hat little girl said immediately, with some genius for steering conversation toward the things that interested her.
"You rich thing!" cried Miss Madeira, and then foolishly, and unnecessarily, inquired, "who is he?"
"Yo' sweetheart."
Miss Madeira lowered her voice in such a suggestive manner that when the little girl spoke again her voice was lowered, too.
"When did you see him?" asked Miss Madeira.
"See him ev' day. I cand go daown to Sowfoot by myse'f. He's sick." Miss Madeira looked quickly at some of the older members of the family in the waggon. They were a hill farm family from Sowfoot Crossing neighbourhood. "Yep, he's been sick,—with the malary simlike," was what the older members had to say upon the subject. Miss Madeira quickly left the subject and talked about the corn crop and the price of chickens for a little while, then presently went on down Main Street toward her father's bank, where her black horses were hitched.
Far down Main Street, in front of one of the frame houses that edged the street on either side, some children were enjoying a bonfire of dead leaves, front doors were opening and women were coming out to watch the fire; and, by their interest-lit eyes and by what they called to each other across the slumberous afternoon air, were showing that they were skilled in getting diversion out of smaller things than bonfires. It was the neighbourhood of Canaan's biggest and best. The doors that had opened had shown glimpses of the finest three-ply carpets in all Tigmore County, and though the women who had come out on the porches had grammatical peculiarities of their own, they were distinctly unapologetic and assured. You could easily imagine them laughing, with a consciousness of advantage, at the other grades of grammar and carpets in Canaan.
"Smells real good, don't it?" called one who was comfortable and portly, and who had her apron wrapped about her hands, "always makes me feel that spring's came when the rakin' and burnin' begin."
"Mrs. Pringle told me that they had some big fires aout toward the Ridge las' night. Burned the rakin' aout to Madeira Place. I missed that. D'you see it? I mighta seen it just as well's not from my back porch, tew!" shrilled another woman, in whose words a well-defined jealousy was patent, the jealousy of the person whose life is too small for her to afford to miss any of it.