While Mrs. Troost sat sighing over things in general, Mrs. Hill sewed on the last button, and, shaking the loose threads from the completed garment, held it up a moment to take a satisfactory view, as it were, and folded it away.

“Well, did you ever!” said Mrs. Troost.  “You have made half a shirt, and I have got nothing at all done.  My hands sweat so I can not use the needle, and it’s no use to try.”

“Lay down your work for a little while, and we will walk in the garden.”

So Mrs. Hill threw a towel over her head, and, taking a little tin basin in her hand, the two went to the garden—­Mrs. Troost under the shelter of the blue umbrella, which she said was so heavy that it was worse than nothing.  Beans, radishes, raspberries, and currants, besides many other things, were there in profusion, and Mrs. Troost said every thing flourished for Mrs. Hill, while her garden was all choked up with weeds.  “And you have bees, too—­don’t they sting the children, and give you a great deal of trouble?  Along in May, I guess it was, Troost [Mrs. Troost always called her husband so] bought a hive, or, rather, he traded a calf for one—­a nice, likely calf, too, it was—­and they never did us a bit of good;” and the unhappy woman sighed.

“They do say,” said Mrs. Hill, sympathizingly, “that bees won’t work for some folks; in case their king dies they are very likely to quarrel and not do well; but we have never had any ill luck with ours; and we last year sold forty dollars’ worth of honey, besides having all we wanted for our own use.  Did yours die off, or what, Mrs. Troost?”

“Why,” said the ill-natured visitor, “my oldest boy got stung one day, and being angry, upset the hive, and I never found it out for two or three days; and, sending Troost to put it up in its place, there was not a bee to be found high or low.”

“You don’t tell! the obstinate little creatures!  But they must be treated kindly, and I have heard of their going off for less things.”

The basin was by this time filled with currants, and they returned to the house.  Mrs. Hill, seating herself on the sill of the kitchen door, began to prepare her fruit for tea, while Mrs. Troost drew her chair near, saying, “Did you ever hear about William McMicken’s bees?”

Mrs. Hill had never heard, and, expressing an anxiety to do so, was told the following story: 

“His wife, you know, was she that was Sally May, and it’s an old saying—­

    ’To change the name and not the letter,
    You marry for worse and not for better.’

“Sally was a dressy, extravagant girl; she had her bonnet ‘done up’ twice a year always, and there was no end to her frocks and ribbons and fine things.  Her mother indulged her in every thing; she used to say Sally deserved all she got; that she was worth her weight in gold.  She used to go everywhere, Sally did.  There was no big meeting that she was not at, and no quilting that she didn’t help to get up.  All the girls went to her for the fashions, for she was a good deal in town at her Aunt Hanner’s, and always brought out the new patterns.  She used to have her sleeves a little bigger than anybody else, you remember, and then she wore great stiffeners in them—­la, me! there was no end to her extravagance.