up here on this hill. It's knowin' I can get away, if I have to, that's keepin' me from goin' stark crazy mad—livin' up here alone, never seein' a soul, never hearin' a soul, never even knowin' half the time but the rest of the world's all dead and buried, but just me and Gram and Gramp."
You wouldn't think any girl so near Boston as Isabel lived would feel that way now, would you? But I wasn't a bit surprised. I see a good deal of women in my business, and with most of 'em it's circumstances, not location, that build walls 'round 'em they can't get over.
My business, as I said, is distributin' pretty things to women and children. I collect my stuff cheap in the city stores, and usually, 'long in April sometime, me and Nellie, my mare, start out on the road. We don't make our expenses, nor anywhere near. Most of the women in the houses where we call haven't got much spare change for the kind of merchandise we've got to sell. But we make a lot of friends, and we reap a big harvest every year in welcomes, and come-agains and happy looks, when we leave behind us some little gewgaw or trinket, which, thanks to a few railroad shares left me by an uncle of mine, I can afford to part with for a little less than cost. I like people. I like to talk to 'em and get close to the inside of their thoughts. I'm kind of a
