... lingered out of doors in the cold as long as there was any excuse for so doing, and had fed the cattle early, and cleared up and laid into a neat pile some fencing materials and pieces of old boards that had been lying in the shed in great confusion since before the coming of snow. It was a dusty, splintery heap, half worthless, and he had thrown some of the broken fence-boards out to the wood-pile, and then had stopped to break them up for kindlings and to bring them into the back kitchen of the house, hoping, yet fearing at every turn, to hear the ... — The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
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