“Ain’t you-uns goin’ to teach the Yellett outfit ther spellin’, writin’, and about George Washington, an’ how the Yankees kem along arter he was in his grave an’ fit us and broke up the kentry so we had ter leave our home in Tennessee an’ kem to this yere outdacious place, where nobody knows the diffunce between aig-bread an’ corn-dodger?  I war a Miss Tumlin from Tennessee.”

The rocking-chair now began to recover its accustomed momentum.  This much-heralded educational expert was far from terrifying.  Indeed, to Mrs. Rodney’s hawklike gaze, that devoured every visible item of Mary’s extremely modest travelling-dress, there was nothing so very wonderful about “the gov’ment from the East.”  With a deftness compatible only with long practice, Mrs. Rodney now put a foot on the round of an adjoining chair and shoved it towards Mary Carmichael in hospitable pantomime, never once relaxing her continual rocking the meantime.  Mary took the chair, and Mrs. Rodney, after freshening up the snuff-brush from a small, tin box in her lap, put spurs to her rocking-chair, so to speak, and started off at a brisk canter.

“I ’low it’s mighty queer you-uns don’t recognize the job you-uns kem out yere to take, when I call it by name.”  From the sheltering flap of the pink sun-bonnet she turned a pair of black eyes full of ill-concealed suspicion.  “Miz Yellett givin’ herself as many airs ‘bout hirin’ a gov’ment ‘s if she wuz goin’ to Congress.  Queer you don’t know whether you be one or not!” She withdrew into the sun-bonnet, muttering to herself.  She could not be more than fifty, Mary thought, but her habit of muttering and exhibiting her depopulated gums while she was in the act of revivifying the snuff-brush gave her a cronish aspect.

A babel of voices came from the open-faced room on the opposite side of the house corresponding to the one in which Mary and Mrs. Rodney were sitting.  Apparently supper was being prepared by some half-dozen young people, each of whom thought he or she was being imposed upon by the others.  “Hand me that knife.”  “Git it yourself.”  “I’ll tell maw how you air wolfing down the potatoes as fast as I can fry ’em.”  “Go on, tattle-tale.”  This was the repartee, mingled with the hiss of frying meat, the grinding of coffee, the thumping sound made by bread being hastily mixed in a wooden bowl standing on a wooden table.  The babel grew in volume.  Dogs added to it by yelping emotionally when the smell of the newly fried meat tempted them too near the platter and some one with a disengaged foot at his disposal would kick them out of doors.  Personalities were exchanged more freely by members of the family, and the meat hissed harder as it was newly turned.  “Laws-a-massy!” muttered Mrs. Rodney; and then, shoving back the sun-bonnet, she lifted her voice in a shrill, feminine shriek: 

“Eudory!  Eu-dory!  You-do-ry!”