Mr. David has arrived at no such state of impersonality; neither has Mrs. Laura. I happened to be at their house when Nanny Joe called. Mr. David thought that Hannah Knowles might put out her children, and then go to the almshouse. He said he gave fifty cents three weeks before to help buy a new stove for Aunt Jinny under the hill; also that he felt poorer than common just then, on account of having between one hundred and two hundred dollars not drawing interest, waiting for him to find a safe way of investing it; also that his wife’s breaking her arm had been a great damage to him. Nanny Joe offered to accept potatoes, and dispose of them at Piper’s Mills. He said potatoes were a cash article, but finally agreed to her taking half a bushel. The tea-table was standing; and I observed that there was no lack of good things to eat. Mr. David, no doubt, takes it for granted that he must have his comforts, whatever others may lack. Perhaps he thinks this is true Bible doctrine. Mr. David is a very doctrinal man.
Nanny Joe asked Mrs. Laura for some old pantaloons to make over for Mrs. Knowles’s son. Mrs. Laura replied that her husband and the boys were very hard on their pantaloons. There are two sons at home, Elbridge and Prince, tall, slim boys of thirty-five or forty. Elbridge has a small face, and a comical, one-sided twinkle of the eye, which he takes from his father.
Mrs. Laura brought out various garments, in various stages of decay, each of which was examined in turn. One pair would stand it a spell for second-best; another would do for rainy weather; another, for rough work; and so on. A pair of gray satinets, weak-kneed, and in other respects decrepit, Elbridge remarked, with his one-sided twinkle, were “jest about a herrin’.” But his mother declared them to be the very things to wear in the woods. Then he picked up a pair of brown ones, saying they were too short ever to be worn again without “splicing,” and that Hannah Knowles had better take them. His mother said she would see, first, if there were any pieces like them in the bag, “to lengthen the legs down.” The bundle-bag was brought forward, roll after roll taken out, and its label read: “Prince’s mixed suit o’ clothes,” “Father’s last tail-coat,” “Father’s summer alpaca waistcoat,” “Elbridge’s sack cut out by Sally Payne’s pattern,” “Prince’s satinet pantaloons,” “Elbridge’s frock-coat he had cut out by the tailor,” “Elbridge’s brown small-legs pantaloons”—
“That’s the animal!” cried Elbridge. “But it doesn’t look like ’em.”
“They’ll fade alike, though, some time or other,” his mother remarked.
“These won’t fade alike, though,” he cried, taking up a pair spotted over with paint.
“I’ve been saving that pair o’ pantaloons to braid,” answered his mother; “but still” (examining them closely) “they’re rather stiff; and on the whole, if Hannah Knowles can make any use of that pair of pantaloons, she may have ’em.” “So, Mrs. Laura,” thought I, “you give away what is of no use to you. True Bible benevolence that!” Mrs. Laura is a stanch Bible woman.
Nanny Joe declined the generous gift, and rose to go, fearing, as she afterward told me, that the chapel question might be introduced; which question she had then no leisure for discussing. I came out at the same time, having something to communicate on that very subject. Just as we got outside the gate, a bundle came down plump on the ground in front of us, which same, by unrolling, showed itself to be “Elbridge’s brown small-legs pantaloons.” We turned, and, guided by a loud hem, looked up to the roof, and saw there the comical phiz of the owner protruding from a scuttle. He gave a nod, a finger-shake of warning, and vanished. We picked up the prize, but had a narrow escape with it, as Mrs. Laura opened the door suddenly to ask Nanny Joe if she had seen a certain piece in the paper about woman’s sphere.
The dispute as to whether women shall or shall not be allowed to become speaking and voting members of the parish shakes Tweenit to its centre. The sewing-circle members think they should have a voice in the disposal of their own money; but the men, many of them, cannot see their way clear to letting them have a voice in the disposal of their own money, or a voice in their own chapel when it shall be built. The quarrel waxes warm. Not only the neighborhood, but families, are divided. Elbridge Melendy thinks differently from his father. Martha Fennel and her lover are on opposite sides; and, in their case, the warmth of the argument has produced a coolness of feeling. We shall see what we shall see.