"But what is it Barby? what is wrong?"
"There ha'n't been anything right, to my notions, for a long spell," said Barby, wringing out her dishcloth 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 ain't wood to last three days; and Hugh ain't fit to cut it if it was piled up in the yard; and there ain't 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.
"O never mind the cows," said Barby;--"they ain't 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 ain't 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 spile her appetite, I s'pose; and if there's grain in the floor there ain't nobody to carry it to mill,--nor to thresh 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 streakin' off just at the minute when he'd ought to be along."