"Put 'em in to-day, Lois. And your garden has the sun on it; so I shouldn't wonder if you beat me after all. Well, I must go along and look arter my old man. He just let me run away now 'cause I told him I was kind o' crazy about the fashions; and he said 'twas a feminine weakness and he pitied me. So I come. Mrs. Dashiell has been a week to New London; but la! New London bonnets is no account."
"You don't get much light from Lois," remarked Charity.
"No. Did ye learn anything, Lois, while you was away?"
"I think so, aunt Anne."
"What, then? Let's hear. Learnin' ain't good for much, without you give it out."
Lois, however, seemed not inclined to be generous with her stores of new knowledge.
"I guess she's learned Shampuashuh ain't much of a place," the elder sister remarked further.
"She's been spellin' her lesson backwards, then. Shampuashuh's a first-rate place."
"But we've no grand people here. We don't eat off silver dishes, nor drink out o' gold spoons; and our horses can go without little lookin'-glasses over their heads," Charity proceeded.
"Do you think there's any use in all that, Lois?" said her aunt.