Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/343

 turned the ham capably—"and I expect to stay as many more as the Lord spares my life! I was born here. So was father. Grandfather was born right in the Corners. In eighty-eight we were snowed up a week here. Mr. Winterpine—that's my husband—had bronchitis, and he couldn't get out to tend to the stock. Edgar—that was the hired man's name—was only twenty, and I had to help with one of the cows; I went out in my chair through a snow tunnel!"

She chuckled reminiscently and her guests listened, fascinated.

"We were caught in a bad storm outside of St. Petersburg, once," Gold-bag volunteered. "If it hadn't been for J. G. we'd have gone out, probably. As it was, the driver lost a finger."

"St. Petersburg, Russia?" the woman inquired respectfully, her skillet full of potatoes colored like autumn beech leaves.

The girl nodded. "J. G. swore at the man, so he didn't dare die," she continued, with a hard little grin; "and we just about pulled through."

"Who is J. G.?" asked Caroline abruptly.