Mrs. Motherwell had warned Tom against Maud Murray as
well as Nellie Slater. She had once seen Maud churning,
and she had had a newspaper pinned to the wall in front
of her, and was reading it as she worked, and Mrs.
Motherwell knew that a girl who would do that would come
to no good.
Martha Perkins was the one girl of whom Mrs. Motherwell
approved. Martha's record on butter and quilts and mats
stood high. Martha was a nice quiet girl. Mrs. Motherwell
often said a "nice, quiet, unappearing girl." Martha
certainly was quiet. Her conversational attainments did
not run high. "Things is what they are, and what's the
good of saying anything," Martha had once said in defence
of her silent ways.
She was small and sallow-skinned and was dressed in an
anaemic gray; her thin hay-coloured hair was combed
straight back from a rather fine forehead. She stooped
a little when she walked, and even when not employed her
hands picked nervously at each other. Martha's shyness,
the "unappearing" quality, was another of her virtues in
the eyes of Tom's mother. Martha rarely left home even
to go to Millford. Martha did not go to the Agricultural
Fair when her mats and quilts and butter and darning and
buttonholes on cotton got their red tickets. Martha
stayed at home and dug potatoes--a nice, quiet,
unappearing girl.
When they played games at the Slaters that evening, Martha
would not play. She never cared for games she said, they
tired a person so.
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