And great grief! Now he'd wear it and his chaps and spurs to the table, if I didn't make him take them off.

She's nice--she's most too nice.

I've got to give that girl a good talking to." She mounted the steps to the back porch, tried the kitchen door, and found it locked.

She went around to the door on the west side, opposite the gate, found that also secured upon the inside, and passed grimly to the next.
"My grief! I didn't know any of these doors COULD be locked!" she muttered angrily.

"They never have been before that I ever heard of." She stopped before Evadna's window, and saw, through a slit in the green blind, that the old-fashioned bureau had been pulled close before it.
"My grief!" she whispered disgustedly, and retraced her steps to the east side, which, being next to the pond, was more secluded.
She surveyed dryly a window left wide open there, gathered her brown-and-white calico dress close about her plump person, and crawled grimly through into the sitting-room, where, to the distress of Phoebe's order-loving soul, the carpet was daily well-sanded with the tread of boys' boots fresh from outdoors, and where cigarette stubs decorated every window-sill, and the stale odor of Peaceful's pipe was never long absent.
She went first to all the outer rooms, and unlocked every one of the outraged doors which, unless in the uproar and excitement of racing, laughing boys pursuing one another all over the place with much slamming and good-natured threats of various sorts, had never before barred the way of any man, be he red or white, came he at noon or at midnight.
Evadna's door was barricaded, as Phoebe discovered when she turned the knob and attempted to walk in.