"Yee," he said, smiling; "it's our burial-place; we're Shakers."
"But why are there just the stakes--without names?"
"Why should there be names?" he said, whimsically; "they have
new names now."
"Where is your community? Can we go and visit it?"
"Yee; but we're not much to see," he said; "just men and women, like you.
Only we're happy. I guess that's all the difference."
"But what a difference!" she exclaimed; and Lewis smiled.
"I've come up for pennyroyal," the Shaker explained, sociably; "it grows
thick round here."
"Tell me about the Shakers," Athalia pleaded. "What do you believe?"
"Well," he said, a simple shrewdness glimmering in his brown eyes,
"if you go to the Trustees' House, down there in the valley,
Eldress Hannah'll tell you all about us. And the sisters have
baskets and pretty truck to sell--things the world's people like.
Go and ask the Eldress what we believe, and she'll show
you the baskets."
She turned eagerly to her husband. "Never mind the ten-o'clock
train, Lewis. Let us go!"
"We could take a later train, all right," he admitted, "but--"
"Oh, PLEASE!" she entreated, joyously. "We'll help you pick pennyroyal,"
she added to the Shaker.
But this he would not allow. "I doubt you'd be careful enough,"
he said, mildly; "Sister Lydia was the only female I ever knew
who could pick herbs."
"Do you get paid for the work you do?" Athalia asked, practically.
Lewis flushed at the boldness of such a question, but the
old man chuckled.
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