"P'r'aps you are too rough."
"We wouldn't hurt him the least speck."
"Maybe it's 'cause you are so dirty."
A chorus of indignant denial arose, but at that moment Mrs. Wood herself appeared at an open window and called for Billy Bolee. Immediately the McGees scattered like startled pheasants, and Peace wonderingly turned her steps toward the house, surprising her hostess as she entered the cool room by the blunt question, "Don't you like the McGee family?"
"Why—er—I can get along nicely without their company," Mrs. Wood answered evasively.
"But what's the matter with them?" Peace insisted.
"Nothing, I guess, except they are never clean," laughed the woman, and Gail looked up from a letter she was writing long enough to ask, "Who are the McGees, Peace? Your latest acquaintances?"
"Mrs. McGee is a widow who takes in washing," explained their hostess, without giving Peace a chance to make reply. "She and her seven children live in that three-room shack across the field. When her husband died she took plain sewing to do for a time, but couldn't earn enough at it to keep her family from want, so she turned to the washtubs. She does her work well or did at first, but of late she has attempted more than she can handle satisfactorily, and has grown so careless that several of us have had to take our washings elsewhere."
"'Twasn't careless," Peace interrupted earnestly. "It's her tubs. They are so old and rusty now."
"Then she should get new ones if she expects people to hire her. I can't afford to send my clothes to the wash and have them come back all spotted up with iron-rust. It is almost impossible to get it out."