Naturally she wished to keep her business for herself and was
rather chary about telling others where the herbs she collected grew.
She had heard that thoroughwort was growing in considerable quantity in
the old pastures at "Dresser's Lonesome." She did not like to go up
there alone, however, for the place was ten or eleven miles away, and
the road that led to it ran for most of the distance through deep woods;
a road that once proceeded straight through to Canada, but had long
since been abandoned. Years before, a young man named Abner Dresser had
cleared a hundred acres of land up there and built a house and a large
barn; but his wife had been so lonely--there was no neighbor within ten
miles--that he had at last abandoned the place.
Finally Catherine asked my cousin Theodora to go up to "Dresser's
Lonesome" with her and offered to share the profits of the trip. No one
enjoyed such a jaunt better than Theodora, and one day early the
previous August, they persuaded me to harness one of the work horses to
the double-seated buckboard and to take them up there for the day.
It was a long, hard drive, for the old road was badly overgrown; indeed
we were more than two hours in reaching the place.
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