Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/340

, "There aren't any music pupils left for the oldest one, the two next have got positions in the print mills, and little Sarah is too old for the school here any more."

Miss Abigail shook her head impatiently as though to brush away a troublesome gnat. "How about the Leavitts? There ought to be enough young ones in that one family to" "They moved to Johnsonville last week, going to rent their house to city folks in the summer, the way all the rest here in the street do. They didn't want to go a bit. Eliza felt dreadful about it, but what can they do? Ezra hasn't had enough carpentering to do in the last six months to pay their grocery bill, and down in Johnsonville they can't get carpenters enough. Besides, all the children's friends are there, and they got so lonesome here winters."

Miss Abigail quailed a little, but rallying, she brought out, "What's the matter with the Bennetts? The whole kit and biling of them came in here the other day to pester me asking about how I grew my lilies."

"Why, Miss Abigail! You don't pay any more attention to village news! They've been working in the mills for two years now, and only come home for two weeks in the summer like everybody else."

The old woman stirred her weighty person wrathfully. "Like everybody else! Molly, you talk like a fool! As if there was nobody lived here all the year around!"

"But it's so! I don't know what's coming to Greenford!"

An imperative gesture from the older woman cut her short. "Don't chatter so, Molly! If it's true, that about the library, we've got to do something!"