She was a tall woman
with no apparent fat in her composition, and full of activity,
both muscular and mental.
She rose at six o'clock in the morning, cooked breakfast, set
the table, washed the dishes when the meal was over, milked,
churned, swept, washed, ironed, worked in her little garden,
attended to the flowers in the front yard, and in the afternoon
knitted and quilted and sewed, and after tea she either went to
see her neighbors or had them come to see her. When it was
really dark she lighted the lamp in her parlor and read for an
hour, and if it happened to be one of Miss Mary Wilkins's books
that she read she expressed doubts as to the realism of the
characters therein described.
These doubts she expressed to Dorcas Networthy, who was a
small, plump woman, with a solemn face, who had lived with the
widow for many years and who had become her devoted disciple.
Whatever the widow did, that also did Dorcas--not so well,
for her heart told her she could never expect to do that, but
with a yearning anxiety to do everything as well as she could.
She rose at five minutes past six, and in a subsidiary way she
helped to get the breakfast, to eat it, to wash up the dishes, to
work in the garden, to quilt, to sew, to visit and receive, and
no one could have tried harder than she did to keep awake when
the widow read aloud in the evening.
All these things happened every day in the summertime, but in
the winter the widow and Dorcas cleared the snow from their
little front path instead of attending to the flowers, and in the
evening they lighted a fire as well as a lamp in the parlor.
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