look at the young master, and another fond look at Mirandy, as she puffed away reflectively.  “His wife hadn’t no book-larnin’.  She’d been through the spellin’-book wunst, and had got as fur as ‘asperity’ on it a second time.  But she couldn’t read a word when she was married, and never could.  She warn’t overly smart.  She hadn’t hardly got the sense the law allows.  But schools was skase in them air days, and, besides, book-larnin’ don’t do no good to a woman.  Makes her stuck up.  I never knowed but one gal in my life as had ciphered into fractions, and she was so dog-on stuck up that she turned up her nose one night at a apple-peelin’ bekase I tuck a sheet off the bed to splice out the table-cloth, which was rather short.  And the sheet was mos’ clean too.  Had-n been slep on more’n wunst or twicet.  But I was goin’ fer to say that when Squire Hawkins married Virginny Gray he got a heap o’ money, or, what’s the same thing mostly, a heap o’ good land.  And that’s better’n book-larnin’, says I. Ef a gal had gone clean through all eddication, and got to the rule of three itself, that would-n buy a feather-bed.  Squire Hawkins jest put eddication agin the gal’s farm, and traded even, an’ ef ary one of ’em got swindled, I never heerd no complaints.”

And here she looked at Ralph in triumph, her hard face splintering into the hideous semblance of a smile.  And Mirandy cast a blushing, gushing, all-imploring, and all-confiding look on the young master.

“I say, ole woman,” broke in old Jack, “I say, wot is all this ’ere spoutin’ about the Square fer?” and old Jack, having bit off an ounce of “pigtail,” returned the plug to his pocket.

As for Ralph, he fell into a sort of terror.  He had a guilty feeling that this speech of the old lady’s had somehow committed him beyond recall to Mirandy.  He did not see visions of breach-of-promise suits.  But he trembled at the thought of an avenging big brother.

“Hanner, you kin come along, too, ef you’re a mind, when you git the dishes washed,” said Mrs. Means to the bound girl, as she shut and latched the back door.  The Means family had built a new house in front of the old one, as a sort of advertisement of bettered circumstances, an eruption of shoddy feeling; but when the new building was completed, they found themselves unable to occupy it for anything else than a lumber room, and so, except a parlor which Mirandy had made an effort to furnish a little (in hope of the blissful time when somebody should “set up” with her of evenings), the new building was almost unoccupied, and the family went in and out through the back door, which, indeed, was the front door also, for, according to a curious custom, the “front” of the house was placed toward the south, though the “big road” (Hoosier for highway) ran along the north-west side, or, rather, past the north-west corner of it.

When the old woman had spoken thus to Hannah and had latched the door, she muttered, “That gal don’t never show no gratitude fer favors;” to which Bud rejoined that he didn’t think she had no great sight to be pertickler thankful fer.  To which Mrs. Means made no reply, thinking it best, perhaps, not to wake up her dutiful son on so interesting a theme as her treatment of Hannah.  Ralph felt glad that he was this evening to go to another boarding place.  He should not hear the rest of the controversy.