"What does that mean, you funny thing?"
"I don't know, but that's the way they talk."
Prudy loved Mahla Linck at once. She said she had had just such a lameness her own self, and knew how it felt. "Ah, little dear," said Mahla, laying her wasted cheek close to Prudy's, "but you can walk now without a crutch, and I never can."
"O, Mahla, yes, you can never; you can when you grow an angel."
The Princesses liked to escort Prudy through the streets, and hear her exclamations of surprise. She told them the "Yankees wouldn't 'buze their horses so;" for it seemed to her rather unkind to braid their tails like heads of hair, and tie them up in knots; though Grace assured her this was done to keep them from trailing in the dust. The mules were another curiosity. Prudy was also amazed at the "loads of oxen" driven by men who sat in the carts, and "drove 'em and whipped 'em same as if they was horses." "Yankees," she said, "walked with the oxen, and talked into their ears."
She informed the girls that the Hoosier sky was very odd-looking. "It's Quaker color," she said; "but the sky to Portland is as blue as a robin's egg, 'cept when it fogs."
She described feathery snow-storms, "frost-bitten" windows, and the nice fishing in "Quoddy Bay;" told her listeners that eastern people "shave" their grass in summer, and when it is dry it's good to jump on.
For the short time Prudy staid in Indiana her sunny face was a pleasure to everybody.
"Why, aunt Ria," said she, "do you think I'm good, though? Well, I'm ever'n ever so much better away from home."