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 spinning diligently. They nodded kindly to him and smiled, but did not utter a sound, as their mother had strictly forbidden them to do so. The farmer led the talking, while his wife waited on them with good food and drinks. The girls spun and looked at the young man at the table, and glanced at each other and at the ceiling and out of the windows, but none of them spoke. At length the one happened to break her yarn. "My 'arn bote!" exclaimed she. "Tie it adain," advised her sister. "Mamma told us we say no'tin', and now we t'ant teep 'till!" broke in the third one.

When Tom heard these grown girls talk like babies, he hurried away, utterly shocked. A wife who could not speak distinctly he had no use for at all.

He proceeded to another farm, where they had a daughter who was said to be a very fine girl in all respects. Tom went into the house and saw her. If the first three ones had been too silent, this one talked, however, more fluently and volubly than any girl whom he had ever met. She talked like a house on fire, while her spinning-wheel went more rapidly than any engine. "How long does it take you to use up such a head of flax?" asked the young man, pointing to the rock. "Oh," she said, "I use up a couple of them every day."

While she left the room a few minutes to look after the servants, Tom seized a key from a drawer of a bureau in the room and stuffed it into the head of flax. When she returned, they finished their