"There ha'n't been anything right, to my notions, for a long spell," said Barby, wringing out her dish-cloth hard, and flinging it down, to give herself uninterruptedly to talk; "but now you see, Didenhover, nor none of the men, never comes near the house to do a chore; and there aint wood to last three days; and Hugh aint fit to cut it if it was piled up in the yard; and there aint the first stick of it out of the woods yet."
Fleda sat down, and looked very thoughtfully into the fire.
"He had ought to ha' seen to it afore he went away; but he ha'n't done it, and there it is."
"Why, who takes care of the cows?" said Fleda.
"Oh, never mind the cows," said Barby, "they aint suffering I wish we was as well off as they be; but I guess, when he went away, he made a hole in our pockets for to mend his'n. I don't say he hadn't ought to ha' done it, but we've been pretty short ever sen, Fleda we're in the last bushel of flour, and there aint but a handful of corn meal, and mighty little sugar, white or brown. I did say something to Mis' Rossitur, but all the good it did was to spoil her appetite, I s'pose; and if there's grain in the floor, there aint nobody to carry it to mill nor to thrash it nor a team to draw it, fur's I know."
"Hugh cannot cut wood," said Fleda, "nor drive to mill either, in this weather."
"I could go to mill," said Barby, "now you're to hum; but that's only the beginning, and it's no use to try to do everything flesh and blood must stop somewhere."
"No, indeed!" said Fleda. "We must have somebody immediately."
"That's what I had fixed upon," said Barby. "If you could get hold o' some young feller that wa'n't sot up with an idee that he was a grown man and too big to be told, I'd just clap to and fix that little room up-stairs for him, and give him his victuals here, and we'd have some good of him; instead o' having him streaking off just at the minute when he'd ought to be along."
"Who is there we could get, Barby?"