Of all the tale-bearers, and there were many, none were as harmless, and at the same time as busy as Mrs. Hodgkins.

Walking down a shady lane one might espy her endeavoring to hold a friendly confab with some busy farmer’s wife who, while hanging out her washing, endeavored to hold a clothespin in her mouth, and at the same time answer Mrs. Hodgkins’ frequent questions, such as,

“Naow did ye ever hear anything ter beat that?

“Ain’t ye amazed at the idee?”

Mrs. Hodgkins would on such occasions, lean against the rail fence and bombard the busy woman alternately with bits of news, and pointed questions until, the last piece of linen in place upon the line, the empty basket would be a signal for adieus.

Then Sophrony Hodgkins would meander down the lane, and if fortune favored her, would find at the next farm-house its mistress possibly at the well or sunning her milk pans in a corner of the door-yard.

Immediately she would hail her with joy and proceed to repeat her own stock of news with the addition of a few particulars gleaned from the first friend.

“Sophrony Hodgkins’ stories,” remarked old Nate Burnham, “remind me of the snowballs we used ter roll and roll ’til from a leetle ball we finally by rollin’ an’ trav’lin’ got one bigger’n all creation.

“She starts in with what she’s heard.  Then she adds on what somebody else has heard, and after that, what this one an’ that one and t’other one has heard, ’til the size of the yarn must astonish her.”

“I’ll say one thing ’bout her, though,” remarked Silas Barnes, “with all her talkin’ an’ tellin’ she never tells anything that’s detrimental to somebody’s character.  She’s full er tellin’ ordinary news, but when it comes ter news that would stir up strife, Sophrony’s got nothin’ ter say; so let her talk, I say, ef she enjoys it; she ‘muses herself an’ don’t hurt no one else.”

On the sunny morning when Barnes’ store had been the scene of the gossip and discussion in regard to the new quarters for the school, Sophrony Hodgkins had made an early start on a “c’lection tour,” as old Nate Burnham would have called it.  She had met Janie Clifton at the Pour Corners, and had stopped for a chat with her, had waylaid Molly Wilson in the middle of the road, in order to inquire for her mother and baby sister, had stopped for a moment at Mrs. Jenks’ door just to ask if she had heard the wonderful news about Dot Marvin’s old uncle Jehiel, had paused to look over the wall at the new Jersey cow which old Mr. Simpkins had recently purchased, and to casually inquire if Timotheus was intending to again be a pupil at the deestrict school, bein’s he’d growed so durin’ the summer’n seemed more like a man than a boy, and had asked little Johnny Buffum what on airth his sister Hitty had her head tied up in hot weather for, when beet juice dropped in her ear would cure her earache in two minutes, and had been informed that,