She paused.  The other woman asked, “Well, what did she say?”

The echoes rang again to the old woman’s great laugh.  “We might as well ha’ asked her ‘bout the back side of th’ moon!  So we gave up on olives and lemons!  Then Eben he asked her ’bout taxes there.  Were they on land mostly and were they high and who ’sessed ’em and how ’bout school tax.  Did the state pay part o’ that?  You see town meetin’ being so all tore up every year ’bout taxes, Eben he thought ’twould be a chance to hear how other folks did, and maybe learn somethin’.  Good land, Abby, I’ve set there and ‘most died, trying to keep from yellin’ right out with laugh to see our folks tryin’ to learn somethin’ ’bout foreign parts from that woman that’s traveled in ’em steady for five years.  I bet she was blind-folded and gagged and had cotton in her ears the hull time she was there!”

“Didn’t she tell you anythin’ ’bout taxes?”

“Taxes?  You’d ha’ thought ‘twas bumble-bees’ hind legs we was askin’ ’bout!  She ackshilly seemed s’prised to be asked.  Land!  What had she ever thought ‘bout such triflin’ things as taxes.  She didn’t know how they was taxed in Italy, or if they was ... nor anywhere else.  That what it come down to, every time.  She didn’t know!  She didn’t know what kind of schools they had, nor what the roads was made of, nor who made ’em.  She couldn’t tell you what hired men got, nor any wages, nor what girls that didn’t get married did for a living, nor what rent they paid, nor how they ’mused themselves, nor how much land was worth, nor if they had factories, nor if there was any lumberin’ done, nor how they managed to keep milk in such awful hot weather without ice.  Honest, Abby, she couldn’t even say if the houses had cellars or not.  Why, it come out she never was in a real house that anybody lived in ... only hotels.  She hadn’t got to know a single real person that b’longed there.  Of course she never found out anything ’bout how they lived.  Her mother was there, she said, and her aunt, and that Bilson family that comes to th’ village summers, an’ the Goodriches an’ the Phippses an’ the ... oh, sakes alive, you know that same old crowd that rides ‘roun’ here summers and thinks to be sociable by sayin’ how nice an’ yellow your oats is blossomin’!  You could go ten times ‘roun’ the world with them and know less ’bout what folks is like than when you started.  When I heard ’bout them being there, I called Eben and Joel and Em’ly off and I says, ’Now, don’t pester that poor do-less critter with questions any more.  How much do the summer folks down to th’ village know ‘bout the way we live?’ Well, they burst out laughin’, of course.  Well, then,’ I says, ’’tis plain to be seen that all they do in winter is to go off to some foreign part and do the same as here,’ so I says to them, same’s I said to you, Abby, a while back, that they’d better save their breath to cool their porridge.  But it’s awful solemn eatin’ now, without a word spoke.”