I'd parted with most o' the woodland, if Is'iah'd coveted it. He was
welcome to that, 'cept what might keep me in oven-wood. I've always
desired to travel an' see somethin' o' the world, but I've got the
chance now when I don't value it no great."
"Shrewsbury is a busy, pleasant place," I ventured to say by way of
comfort, though my heart was filled with rage at the trickery of
Isaiah Peet, who had always looked like a fox and behaved like one.
"Shrewsbury's be'n held up consid'able for me to smile at," said the
poor old soul, "but I tell ye, dear, it's hard to go an' live
twenty-two miles from where you've always had your home and friends.
It may divert me, but it won't be home. You might as well set out one
o' my old apple-trees on the beach, so 't could see the waves come
in,--there wouldn't be no please to it."
"Where are you going to live in Shrewsbury?" I asked presently.
"I don't expect to stop long, dear creatur'. I'm 'most seventy-six
year old," and Mrs. Peet turned to look at me with pathetic amusement
in her honest wrinkled face. "I said right out to Is'iah, before a
roomful o' the neighbors, that I expected it of him to git me home an'
bury me when my time come, and do it respectable; but I wanted to airn
my livin', if 'twas so I could, till then. He'd made sly talk, you
see, about my electin' to leave the farm and go 'long some o' my own
folks; but"--and she whispered this carefully--"he didn't give me no
chance to stay there without hurtin' my pride and dependin' on him.
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