[Pg 36]

Rose blushed and laughed, and drove up the hill to Mite Shapley’s, where she put up the horse and waited till the men had eaten their luncheon. The drivers slept and had breakfast and supper at the Billings house, a mile down river, but for several years Mrs. Wiley had furnished the noon meal, sending it down piping hot on the stroke of twelve. The boys always said that up or down the whole length of the Saco there was no such cooking as the Wileys’, and much of this praise was earned by Rose’s serving. It was the old grandmother who burnished the tin plates and dippers till they looked like silver; for crotchety and sharp-tongued as she was—she never allowed Rose to spoil her hands with soft soap and sand: but it was Rose who planned and packed, Rose who hemmed squares of old white tablecloths and sheets to line the baskets and keep[Pg 37] things daintily separate, Rose, also, whose tarts and cakes were the pride and admiration of church sociables and sewing societies.

[Pg 37]

Where could such smoking pots of beans be found? A murmur of ecstatic approval ran through the crowd when the covers were removed. Pieces of sweet home-fed pork glistened like varnished mahogany on the top of the beans, and underneath were such deeps of fragrant juice as come only from slow fires and long, quiet hours in brick ovens. Who else could steam and bake such mealy leaves of brown bread, brown as plum-pudding, yet with no suspicion of sogginess? Who such soda-biscuits, big, feathery, tasting of cream, and hardly needing butter? And green-apple pies! Could such candied lower crusts be found elsewhere, or more delectable filling? Or such rich, nutty doughnuts?—doughnuts that had spurned the hot fat which is the ruin of so many, and risen from its waves like golden-brown Venuses.[Pg 38]

[Pg 38]

“By the great seleckmen!” ejaculated Jed Towle, as he swallowed his fourth, “I’d like to hev a wife, two daughters, and four sisters like them Wileys, and jest set still on the river-bank an’ hev ’em cook victuals for me. I’d hev nothin’ to wish for then but a mouth as big as the Saco’s.”

“And I wish this custard pie was the size o’ Bonnie Eagle Pond,” said Ike Billings. “I’d like to fall into the middle of it and eat my way out!”

[Pg 39]

[Pg 39]

“Look at that bunch o’ Chiny asters tied on t’ the bail o’ that biscuit-pail!” said Ivory Dunn. “That’s 

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