He caught hold of the girl by her slender shoulders and faced her round towards him. She turned pale, and gave a smothered scream. "Thar! thar! don't you go to being afeard of me," said the peddler. "I wouldn't hurt you for the whole world. I jest want to take a squar look at you. You're the worst-off-lookin' little cretur I ever set my eyes on." She looked up at him pitifully, still only half reassured. There were inflamed circles around her dilated blue eyes. "You've been cryin', ain't you?" The girl nodded meekly. "Please let me go," she said. "Yes, I'll let you go; but I'm a-goin' to ask you a few questions first, an' I want you to answer 'em, for I'll be hanged ef I ever see—Ain't she good to you?" — indicating Mrs. King with a wave of his hand toward the door through which she had departed. "Yes, she's good enough, I guess." "Don't ever scold you, hey?" "I don' know; I guess so, sometimes." "Did this mornin', didn't she?" "A little. I was kinder behind with the work." "Keeps you workin' pretty stiddy, don't she?" "Yes; thar's consider'ble to do this time o' year." "Cookin' for hired men, I s'pose, and butter an' milk?" "Yes." "How long hev you been livin' here?" "She took me when I was little." "Do you do anything besides work? — go round like other gals? — hev any good times?" "Sometimes." She said it doubtfully, as if casting about in her mind for reminiscences to prove the truth of it. * Also included in this volume are "Two Old Lovers," "A Symphony in Lavender," "A Tardy Thanksgiving," "A Modern Dragon," "An Honest Soul," "A Taste of Honey," "Brakes and White Vi'lets," "Robins and Hammers," "On the Walpole Road," "Old Lady Pingree," "Cinnamon Roses," "The Bar Light-house," "A Lover of Flowers," "A Faraway Melody," "A Moral Exigency," "A Mistaken Charity," "Gentian," "An Object of Love," "A Gatherer of Simples," "An Independent Thinker," "In Butterfly Time," "An Unwilling Guest," "A Souvenir," "An Old Arithmetician," "A Conflict Ended," "A Patient Waiter," "A Conquest of Humility."
Author
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and attended Mount Holyoke College (then, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for one year, from 1870–71. Freeman's parents were orthodox Congregationalists, causing her to have a very strict childhood. Religious constraints play a key role in some of her works. She later finished her education at West Brattleboro Seminary. She passed the greater part of her life in Massachusetts and Vermont. Freeman began writing stories and verse for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. Her best known work was written in the 1880s and 1890s while she lived in Randolph. She produced more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. She is best known for two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life and are among the best of their kind. Freeman is also remembered for her novel Pembroke (1894), and she contributed a notable chapter to the collaborative novel The Whole Family (1908). In 1902 she married Doctor Charles M. Freeman of Metuchen, New Jersey. In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Metuchen and was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.
