I
can take more interest when my work is off my mind. You've no prejudice
against hot biscuit for supper? Some have, these days.'
While I was putting my horse away, I heard a rooster squawking. I looked
at my watch and sighed; it was three o'clock, and I knew that I must eat
him at six.
After supper Mrs. Steavens and I went upstairs to the old sitting-room,
while her grave, silent brother remained in the basement to read his farm
papers. All the windows were open. The white summer moon was shining
outside, the windmill was pumping lazily in the light breeze. My hostess
put the lamp on a stand in the corner, and turned it low because of the
heat. She sat down in her favourite rocking-chair and settled a little
stool comfortably under her tired feet. `I'm troubled with calluses, Jim;
getting old,' she sighed cheerfully. She crossed her hands in her lap and
sat as if she were at a meeting of some kind.
`Now, it's about that dear Antonia you want to know? Well, you've come to
the right person. I've watched her like she'd been my own daughter.
`When she came home to do her sewing that summer before she was to be
married, she was over here about every day. They've never had a
sewing-machine at the Shimerdas', and she made all her things here.
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