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 much to do, kin visit each other. An' I'll lend you my books an' you kin lend me yourn; an' we'll sew rags together an' have good times. You know it gits awful lonesome in these hollers, an' anybody needs neighbors. Tain't like livin' on the pike."

Judith proudly showed Hat her new chicken coops, the four dozen hens that her father had given her, the place that they had selected for a garden spot and the shepherd pup which a neighbor had given them, a fluffy ball of black and white silk, trimmed, as nature knows how to trim, with soft tan. Then she led her into the house and showed her, piece by piece, all her wedding finery, her new sheets and towels and her bright bedquilts. Hat examined all these things with deep interest and exclaimed over them with unfeigned admiration. In the intervals of looking at the things to which Judith called her attention, her bold black eyes travelled about the room and took in every detail of its floor, walls, and furnishings. Nothing escaped her. She was alive with that small curiosity so frequent in farmers' wives, which causes them to take note of the smallest minutiæ of their neighbors' interiors. When she went away she carried in her mind an exact photograph of Judith's two rooms and of her dooryard. She even knew that Judith's clothesline was a wire and not a rope one. Such capacity for detail does solitude engender in the female mind.

"Well," she said at last, when she was prepared to leave, "I'll have to be a-gittin' along back home. I got a right smart o' little chicks hatched out an' I want to raise every one of 'em an' make as much as I kin this summer. It gits dark early in our holler, an' the rats begin to run around most afore the sun's gone. So I'd best git back an' git the chicks cooped up. I can't trust nothin' to Luke. Come over, Judy."

"Yes, you come agin, Hat."