"Well, it'll have to a spell yet," said Barby, "cause if it didn't, you see, Captain Rossitur, there'd be nothing to fill Fleda's chickens with."
"Chickens! where's all the corn in the land?"
"It's some place besides in our barn," said Barby. "All last year's is out, and Mr. Didenhover aint fetched any of this year's home; so I made a bargain with 'em, they shouldn't starve as long as they'd eat boiled pursley."
"What do you give them?"
"Most everything they aint particular now-a-days chunks o' cabbages, and scarcity, and pun'kin, and that all the sass that aint wanted."
"And do they eat that?"
"Eat it!" said Barby; "they don't know how to thank me for't."
"But it ought to be done out of doors," said Charlton, coming black from a kind of maze in which he had been listening to her. "It is unendurable."
"Then I guess you'll have to go some place where you wont know it," said Barby "that's the most likely plan I can hit upon; for it'll have to stay on till it's ready."
Charlton went back into the other room really down-hearted, and stood watching the play of Fleda's fingers.