The heiress of all the Grahams wanted to laugh at this naive proposal, but good feeling and good manners alike forbade.  She thanked Miss Bean for her kind offer, and explained that she was only spending her school vacation at Hartley Farm; that her time was fully occupied, etc., etc.

The little milliner looked so disappointed that Hilda was seized with a royal impulse, and offered to “go over” the hats in the window while she waited for Farmer Hartley, and freshen them up a bit.

“Well, I wish’t ye would!” said poor Miss Bean.  “Fact is, I ain’t done so well as I c’d wish this season.  Folks is dretful ‘fraid o’ buyin’ new things nowadays.”

Then followed a series of small confidences on the hair-cloth sofa, while Hilda’s fingers flew about the forlorn hats and bonnets, changing a ribbon here and a flower there, patting and poking, and producing really marvellous results.  Another tale of patient labor, suffering, privation.  An invalid mother and an “innocent” brother for this frail little woman to support.  Doctors’ bills and hard times, and stingy patrons who were “as ’fraid of a dollar-bill as if ’twas the small-pox.”  Hilda’s eyes filled with tears of sympathy, and one great drop fell on the green satin hat, but was instantly covered by the wreath of ivy which was replacing the staring cock’s feathers.

“Wal, I declare to gracious!” exclaimed Miss Bean.  “You’d never know that for the same hat, now, would ye?  I thought ’twas han’some before, but it’s enough site han’somer now.  I shouldn’ wonder a mite if Mis’ Peasley bought that hat now.  She’s been kind o’ hankerin’ arter it, the last two or three times she was in here; but every time she tried it on, she’d say No, ’twas too showy, she guessed.  Wal, I do say, you make a gret mistake not goin’ into the trade, for you’re born to it, that’s plain.  When a pusson’s born to a thing, he’s thrown away, you may say, on anything else.  What was you thinkin’—­”

But at this moment came a cheery call of “Huldy!  Huldy!” and Hildegarde, cutting short the little woman’s profuse thanks and invitations to call again, bade her a cordial good-by, and ran out to the wagon, carrying her purchase neatly done up in brown paper.

“Stiddy thar!” said the farmer, making room for her on the seat beside him.  “Look out for the ile-can, Huldy!  Bought out the hull shop, hev ye?  Wal, I sh’ll look for gret things the next few days.  Huddup thar, Nancy!” And they went jingling back along the street again.

As they passed the queer little shops, with their antiquated signboards, the farmer had something to say about each one.  How Omnium Grabb here, the grocer, missed his dried apples one morning, and how he accused his chore-boy, who was his sister’s son too, of having eaten them,—­“As if any livin’ boy would pick out dried apples to eat, when he hed a hull store to choose from!” and how the very next day a man coming to buy a pair of boots, Omnium Grabb hooked down a pair from the ceiling, where all the boots hung, and found them “chock full” of dried apples, which the rats had been busily storing in them and their companion pairs.