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Mrs. Bridges lifted her head; all the softness and irresolution went out of her face.

“Well, I’m sorry for her,” she said, with an air of dismissing a disagreeable subject; “but the world’s full o’ troubles, an’ if you cried over all o’ them you’d be a-cryin’ all the time. Isaphene, you go out an’ blow that dinner-horn. I see the men-folks ’av’ got the horses about foddered. What did you do?” she cried out, sharply. “Drop a smoothin’-iron on your hand? Well, my goodness! Why don’t you keep your eyes about you? You’ll go an’ get a cancer yet!”

“I’m thinkin’ about buyin’ a horse an’ buggy,” she announced, with stern triumph, when the girl had gone out. “An’ an organ. Isaphene’s been wantin’ one most offul. I’ve give up her paw’s ever gettin’ her one. First a new harrow, an’ then a paten’ rake, an’ then a seed-drill—an’ then my mercy”—imitating a masculine voice—“he ain’t got any money left for silliness! But I’ve got some laid by. I’d like to see his eyes when he comes home an’ finds a bran new buggy with a top an’ all, an’ a horse that he can’t hetch to a plow, no matter how bad he wants to! I ain’t sure but I’ll get a phaeton.”