Page:The Angel of Lonesome Hill (1910).djvu/8

 With acquaintanceships as with books, the ecstasy of cutting leaves is not always sustained in the reading, and the silence of this man and woman was the life of village wonder.

It gave "Friday's" chimney talk a spice it otherwise had never known; the back log seldom crumbled into ashes till the bones of these cabin dwellers lay bleaching on the plains of "Perhaps."

John Dale was seventy-five years or more, but worked his niggard hill-side all the day, and seldom came to town. His aged wife was kind; the flowers of her life she gave away, but none could glance upon the garden. She seemed to know when neighbors were ill; hers was the dignity of being indispensable. Many the mother of that region who, standing beneath