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She had been entertained in the one down-stairs room, as royally as these honest cracker women-folk knew how; seated in the family rocking-chair, she had heard in those two hours the social gossip of a wide neighborhood; learned, too, that the cold, wet weather of the last fortnight had killed turkey-chicks and goslings by the score; heard of the damage being done to corn and tobacco, by the prevalent high water; was told how Bess and Brindle fared, off in the rocky pasture which yields little else than mulleins; and how far back Towser had to go, to claim relationship to a collie.
"Wal, next week Huldy she jist borrowed the minister's horse and side-saddle, and rode over to South Parish to her Aunt Bascome's, Widder Bascome's, you know, that lives there by the trout-brook, and got a lot o' turkey-eggs o' her, and come back and set a hen on 'em, and said nothin'; and in good time there was as nice a lot o' turkey-chicks as ever ye see.
That way they run the deer down. Cruel it is, but nature, an' no worse than snow an' ice that starve deer, or a fox that kills turkey-chicks breakin' out of the egg, or ravens that pick the eyes out of new-born lambs an' wait till they die. An' for that matter, men are crueler than beasts of prey, for men add to nature, an' have more than instincts." Helen was silenced, as well as shocked.
Jest helpin' Sally put the turkey-chicks to bed out o' the cold, or I'd 'a' been round at the first splashin' in the road." "And now come in," the Squire said, reaching a hand of welcome from the edge of the porch to the stranger as he mounted the steps. "Old neighbors of ours," he explained Abel and the unseen Sally.
The day before he went back to his own home, now so strange to him, he was out with her, searching for some lost turkey-chicks, and found one with its foot caught in a tangle of rusty wire. The little creature had beaten itself almost to death in its struggle to get away.
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