Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/152

146 from the threshhold, which still wanted a doorstep, and came slowly out to us. The children ran to her with their coppers, and then followed her back to us.

Mrs. Makely called to her before she reached us, "I hope you weren't frightened. We didn't drive over any of them."

"Oh, I wasn't frightened," said the young woman. "It's a very safe place to bring up children, in the country, and I never feel uneasy about them."

"Yes, if they are not under the horses' feet," said Mrs. Makely, mingling instruction and amusement very judiciously in her reply. "Are they all yours?"

"Only five," said the mother, and she pointed to the alien in her flock. "He's my sisters's. She lives just below here." Her children had grouped themselves about her, and she kept passing her hands caressingly over their little heads as she talked. "My sister has nine children, but she has the rest at church with her today."

"You don't speak like an American," Mrs. Makely suggested.

"No, we're English. Our husbands work in the quarry. That's my little palace." The woman nodded her head toward the cottage.