The big white clouds lay like stepping-stones in the sky’s blue river, just as when she was a child.  Their silver-gleaming brightness blinded her ... “Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh ... warte nur ... balde ... ruhest ... du ...” she began to murmur, and stopped, awed by the immensity of the hush about her.  She closed her eyes, pillowed her head on her upthrown arms, and sank into a wide, bright reverie, which grew dimmer and vaguer as the slow changeless hours filed by.

She did not know if it were from a doze, or but from this dreamy haze that she was wakened by the sound of voices outside the house, under the window by which she lay.  There were the tones of a stranger and those of old Mrs. Pritchard, but now flowing on briskly with a volubility unrecognizable.  Virginia sat up, hesitating Were they only passing by, or stopping?  Should She show herself or let them go on?  In an instant the question was settled for her.  It was too late.  She would only shame them if they knew her there.  She had caught her own name.  They were talking of her.

“Well, you needn’t,” said the voice of Mrs. Pritchard “You can just save your breath to cool your porridge You can’t get nothin’ out’n her.”

“But she’s traveled ’round so much, seems’s though ...” began the other woman’s voice.

“Don’t it?” struck in old Mrs. Pritchard assentingly, “But ’tain’t so!”

The other was at a loss.  “Do you mean she’s stuck-up and won’t answer you?” Mrs. Pritchard burst into a laugh, the great, resonant good-nature of which amazed Virginia.  She had not dreamed that one of these sour, silent people could laugh like that.  “No, land no, Abby!  She’s as soft-spoken as anybody could be, poor thing!  She ain’t got nothin’ to say.  That’s all.  Why, I can git more out’n any pack-peddler that’s only been from here to Rutland and back than out’n her ... and she’s traveled all summer long for five years, she was tellin’ us, and last year went around the world.”

“Good land!  Think of it!” cried the other, awestruck.  “China!  An’ Afriky!  An’ London!”

“That’s the way we felt!  That’s the reason we let her come.  There ain’t no profit in one boarder, and we never take boarders, anyhow.  But I thought ’twould be a chance for the young ones to learn something about how foreign folks lived.”  She broke again into her epic laugh.  “Why, Abby, ‘twould ha’ made you die to see us the first few days she was there, tryin’ to get somethin’ out’n her.  Italy, now ... had she been there?  ’Oh, yes, she adored Italy!’” Virginia flushed at the echo of her own exaggerated accent.  “Well, we’d like to know somethin’ about Italy.  What did they raise there?  Honest, Abby, you’d ha’ thought we’d hit her side th’ head.  She thought and she thought, and all she could say was ‘olives,’ Nothing else?  ’Well, she’d never noticed anything else ... oh, yes, lemons.’  Well, that seemed kind o’ queer vittles, but you can’t never tell how foreigners git along, so we thought maybe they just lived off’n olives and lemons; and Joel he asked her how they raised ’em, and if they manured heavy or trusted to phosphate, and how long the trees took before they began to bear, and if they pruned much, and if they had the same trouble we do, come harvest time, to hire hands enough to git in th’ crop.”