“Up in the pine-lot, ma’am.  You think you can’t let us have the turkeys?”

“Dew tell ef you went up there!  It’s near about the sightliest place I ever see.  Well, no,—­I don’t see how’s to ketch them turkeys.  Miss Bemont, she’t lives over on Woodchuck Hill, she’s got a lot o’ little turkeys in a coop; I guess you’d better go ‘long over there, an’ ef you can’t get none o’ her’n, by that time our boys’ll be to hum, an’ I’ll set ’em arter our’n; they’ll buckle right to; it’s good sport huntin’ little turkeys; an’ I guess you’ll hev to stop, comin’ home, so’s to let me know ef you’ll hev ’em.”

Off we drove.  I stood in mortal fear of Mrs. Peters’s tongue,—­and Kate’s comments; but she did not make any; she was even more charming than before.  Presently we came to the pine-lot, where Melindy and I had been, and I drew the reins.  I wanted to see Kate’s enjoyment of a scene that Kensett or Church should have made immortal long ago:—­a wide stretch of hill and valley, quivering with cornfields, rolled away in pasture lands, thick with sturdy woods, or dotted over with old apple-trees, whose dense leaves caught the slant sunshine, glowing on their tops, and deepening to a dark, velvety green below, and far, far away, on the broad blue sky, the lurid splendors of a thunder-cloud, capped with pearly summits, tower upon tower, sharply defined against the pure ether, while in its purple base forked lightnings sped to and fro, and revealed depths of waiting tempest that could not yet descend.  Kate looked on, and over the superb picture.

“How magnificent!” was all she said, in a deep, low tone, her dark cheek flushing with the words.  Melindy and I had looked off there together.  “It’s real good land to farm,” had been the sweet little rustic’s comment.  How charming are nature and simplicity!

Presently we came to Mrs. Bemont’s, a brown house in a cluster of maples; the door-yard full of chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese.  Kate took the reins, and I knocked.  Mrs. Bemont herself appeared, wiping her red, puckered hands on a long brown towel.

“Can you let me have some of your young turkeys, ma’am?” said I, insinuatingly.

“Well, I do’no’;—­want to eat ’em or raise ’em?”

“Both, I believe,” was my meek answer.

“I do’no’ ‘bout lettin’ on ’em go; ’ta’n’t no gret good to sell ’em after all the risks is over; they git their own livin’ pretty much now, an’ they’ll be wuth twice as much by’m’by.”

“I suppose so; but Mrs. Smith’s turkeys have all died, and she likes to raise them.”

“Dew tell, ef you han’t come from Miss Peter Smith’s!  Well, she’d oughter do gret things with that ‘ere meetin’-’us o’ her’n for the chickens; it’s kinder genteel-lookin’, and I spose they’ve got means; they’ve got ability.  Gentility without ability I do despise; but where ’t’a’n’t so, ’t’a’n’t no matter; but I’xpect it don’t ensure the faowls none, doos it?”