“That’s about all I have to say. That Macbeth woman understood p’intin’ her man.”
“She did, indeed.”
“Sometimes Hiram gets tired of being p’inted. That’s how men are: they haven’t got the natural goodness of women. I wouldn’t give a cent for the woman that don’t know a man has got to be kept p’inted on to the narrow way. They’re awful easy got off the track—just like Hiram: he’ll stop to pick berries any time. You just take notice how Eve she p’inted Adam, and it’s been going on ever since, like it was natural. Maybe ’tis.”
Anne was enchanted.
“Shall I leave you the book?”
“No, I don’t want it. I couldn’t stand two of the kind. Susie Colkett’s enough. Have another cup?”
“No; and thank you for the roses, Dorothy.”
“I hadn’t but just six.”
“They were lovely.” And now Anne was still more certain how six roses came to be five.
“I like them right well, Miss Anne. I don’t believe anybody likes them more than me. Seems like waste, next month, to see those wild roses so thick all along the river, and no one so much as to smell them. Seems just pure waste, like that precious ointment Mrs. Lyndsay and me were talking about the other day. That always did puzzle me, that story.”