noon
Mrs. Simpson , who was decidedly Abner 's better half , took in washing and went out to do days ' cleaning , and the town helped in the feeding and clothing of the children . George , a lanky boy of fourteen , did chores on neighboring farms , and the others , Samuel , Clara Belle , Susan , Elijah , and Elisha , went to school , when sufficiently clothed and not otherwise more pleasantly engaged . There were no secrets in the villages that lay along the banks of Pleasant River . There were many hard-working people among the inhabitants , but life wore away so quietly and slowly that there was a good deal of spare time for conversation , -- under the trees at noon in the hayfield ; hanging over the bridge at nightfall ; seated about the stove in the village store of an evening . These meeting-places furnished ample ground for the discussion of current events as viewed by the masculine eye , while choir rehearsals , sewing societies , reading circles , church picnics , and the like , gave opportunity for the expression of feminine opinion . All this was taken very much for granted , as a rule , but now and then some supersensitive person made violent objections to it , as a theory of life . Delia Weeks , for example , was a maiden lady who did dressmaking in a small way ; she fell ill , and although attended by all the physicians in the neighborhood , was sinking slowly into a decline when her cousin Cyrus asked her to come and keep house for him in Lewiston .