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rear. Ellen hung the cloths on the line, and her only other summer dress, a gay pink cotton, worn only on the most elevated occasions, such as visiting the park on Sundays to hear the band concert. It was nearly three years old and had been made by May, and the telltale hem had been covered by a rickrack braid also made by May. It had a flounce about the neck and flounces on the sleeves, and a narrow blue ribbon sash. Ellen had just washed it carefully, for it was to be worn on the Fourth of July, at the church picnic. Ellen regarded it fondly; she believed it made her almost pretty and acceptable.
    She heard a woman’s bass voice chuckling, and turned her head. Old Mrs. Schwartz, gigantically fat and squat, and with a thin face like the blade of a knife, was leaning on May’s picket fence. She had a raveling mass of dyed hair, frankly of an unlikely shade of auburn, and little glittering sherry-colored eyes, a long and very protruding nose, and a mouth always twisted sardonically. She made her living by “fortune-telling,” and scrubbing and “helping out” at village parties, and was believed to be a witch. She was also an excellent cook and had often been kind enough to recommend May for household tasks and washing and ironing. But May was both afraid of her and hostile towards her, for all her frequent kindliness. “I don’t like her heathenish and unchristian fortune-telling,” she would say to Ellen.
    “Pagan, it is. Keep away from her, Ellen. She can bring you bad luck if she has a mind to.”
    Ellen thought her fascinating. There was, to the young girl, something gay and inspiriting about the old woman, something antic if very malicious. She had a ruffianly way of speaking and gesturing, which appeared to the innate honesty of the girl. Mrs. Schwartz was never “mealy-mouthed” or “nice.” She never said polite things, and all her rude remarks were underlined by significant sneers. She held a book with a broken cover in her spotted hands now, and she poked it in Ellen’s direction.
    “Got you something, gal,” she said. “To wear out those pretty eyes of yours.”
    Ellen ran to her eagerly and received the book and held it in reverent hands. “ Walden and Other Writings , by Henry David Thoreau.” She opened the stained and darkened pages gently so as not to break them. Mrs. Schwartz watched her cunningly; she saw the radiance on the young face and pursed her satirical lips and nodded to herself with a sort of fatality. She pointed to a page Ellen was skimming. “Read that,” she said.
    Ellen read aloud:

    “Mourning untimely consumes the sad;
    Few are their days in the land of the living,
    Beautiful daughter of Toscar.”

    The girl could not fully comprehend what she had read, but she experienced that old and familiar stab of sorrow.
    “‘Beautiful daughter of Toscar,’” said Mrs. Schwartz, gazing at Ellen and again nodding her head. “That’s what I always call you, Ellen my gal.”
    Bemused, yet puzzled, Ellen glanced at her briefly and continued to turn the pages as an avid man examines the meal put before him.
    “That man, Thoreau, wasn’t no coward,” said Mrs. Schwartz. “I don’t believe in any unpardonable sin, but if there’s one, it’s being a coward. Afraid of your own shadow; smirking and cajoling just so folks’ll like you, and won’t stick a knife in you—the way people do when they get the chance. Afraid to offend the Devil, or them that comes in his form, all smiles and teeth and talk of ‘love.’ That’s really wicked, Ellen. Nothing so wicked as them that calls themselves ‘a brother of mankind.’ You got to watch out for them all the time, and run like a rabbit when you sees one. Yes, sir.”
    Something distressful and faintly denying rose in Ellen, and she was struck with a vague despondency though she did not know why. But she said, “Thank you, Mrs. Schwartz. I’ll return the book after I’ve read it.”
    “No, it’s for you, my dear. Found it