LADIES-IN-WAITING
daisies everywhere! How do you manage to keep ’em out o’ your place, Mandy, when they’re so thick on Caleb Kimball’s?”
“I just root an’ root, an’ keep on rootin’,” Amanda responded cheerfully, “though I don’t take a mite o’ pride out of it, for the better my place looks the worse his does, by comparison.”
“It is a sight!” said Mrs. Benson, standing for a moment by the sink and looking up to Kimball’s.
“I went up there one night after dark, when I knew Caleb ’d gone to Hixam, an’ I patched up some o’ the holes in his stone wall, thinkin’ his whiteweed seeds wouldn’t blow through quite so thick!”—and Amanda joined Mrs. Benson at the window. “I’d ’a’ done a day’s work on his side o’ the wall as lief as not, only I knew folks would talk if they saw me.”
“Land, no, they would n’t, Mandy. Everybody knows you would n’t take him if he was the last man on earth; an’ as for Caleb, I guess he would n’t marry
114
