“She doesn’t seem to have done much with Charley.”

“Well, you mark my words, Mr. Charley ain’t bad, but he’s full of natur’, and Jane, is the kind of woman that’s never happy unless she’s gettin’ the better of natur’.  Whatever’s natural is plum wrong, that’s the way she looks at it; but mind you, I ain’t sayin’ she’s all in the right.  Naggin’ ain’t a virtue to my mind any mo’ than drink is, but Jane, she can’t see it that way, and there ain’t a bit of use tryin’ to make her.  She’s soft, but she’s mulish, and the hardest thing on earth to push is a mule that looks soft.”

“It’s such a pity, but I suppose nothing will change her.  Tell me about mother.”

“Yo’ ma looks downright po’ly.  What with her sickness and her bother about Jane and the bad weather, she ain’t managin’ to keep as spry as I’d like to see her.  From the stitch in her back she has most of the time it wouldn’t surprise me any day to hear that she’d come down with kidney trouble, and she breathes so short that consumption has crossed my mind mo’ than once when I was talkin’ to her.”

Miss Polly, having, as she expressed it, “an eye for symptoms,” possessed an artistic rather than a scientific interest in disease; and the vivid realism of her descriptions had often, on her “sewing days” at home, reduced Gabriella to faintness, though Mrs. Carr, with her more delicate sensibilities, was able to listen with apparent enjoyment to the ghastly recitals.  Not only had Miss Polly achieved in her youth a local fame as a “sick nurse,” but, in the days when nursing was neither sanitary nor professional, she was often summoned hastily from her sewing machine to assist at a birth or a burial in one of the families for whom she worked.  And happy always, as befits one whose life, stripped bare of ephemeral blessings, is centred upon the basic realities, she was never happier than when she put down her sewing, took off her spectacles, exchanged her apron for a mantle, and after carefully tying her bonnet strings, departed for a triumphant encounter with the Eternal Issues.

“I am so anxious about mother,” said Gabriella.  “Did she tell you she was going to Florida?”

“She cert’ny did.  She was real full of it, and she talked a lot about you all up here—­the baby and you and Mr. George.  You know I ain’t laid my eyes on Mr. George mo’ than three times in my life.  Well, I reckon I’d better be gettin’ along back, or the children will miss me.  I’ve got four children to do for now, and one of ’em ain’t any bigger than Frances.  It does seem funny—­don’t it, for an old maid to have her hands full of children?  But, you know, I always did dote on children.  There wouldn’t be half so much fun in this world if it wan’t for children and men, and there ain’t a mite of difference between them under their skins.  Yes, I can find my way back real easy.  I always was good at finding my way about, and all I’ve got to do is to set out and walk in that direction till I come to a car over yonder by that high building, and as soon as I get on I’ll ask the conductor to put me off right at my do’.”