Page:New Hampshire (Frost, 1923).djvu/52

38 Admitted; and yet, what was that to him? " Come on my house and I put you one in What's las' awhile—good hick'ry what's grow crooked, De second growt' I cut myself—tough, tough! "

Something to sell? That wasn't how it sounded.

" Den when you say you come? It's cost you nothing. To-naght? "

Beyond an over-warmth of kitchen stove My welcome differed from no other welcome. Baptiste knew best why I was where I was. So long as he would leave enough unsaid, I shouldn't mind his being overjoyed (If overjoyed he was) at having got me Where I must judge if what he knew about an axe That not everybody else knew was to count For nothing in the measure of a neighbor. Hard if, though cast away for life with Yankees, A Frenchman couldn't get his human rating!

Mrs. Baptiste came in and rocked a chair That had as many motions as the world: One back and forward, in and out of shadow, That got her nowhere; one more gradual, Sideways, that would have run her on the stove In time, had she not realized her danger And caught herself up bodily, chair and all, And set herself back where she started from. "She ain't spick too much Henglish—dat's too bad."