"I shouldn't think they were!" said Mrs. Wadleigh, scornfully, testing the heat with a hand on her skirt, and then lifting the breadths back over her quilted petticoat. "I thought that would be the way on't, but I'd made up my mind to come, an' come I would. Cyrus, what's the matter o' you? Nothin' more'n a cold, is it?"
Cyrus had withdrawn from the stove, and was feeling his chin, uncertainly.
"Oh, no, I guess not," he said. "We've been kind o' peaked, for a week or two, all over the neighborhood; but I guess we shall come out on't, now we've got into the spring. Mirandy, you git me a mite o' hot water, an' I'll see if I can't shave."
Mirandy was vigorously washing potatoes at the sink, but she turned, in ever-ready remonstrance.
"Shave!" she ejaculated, "Well, I guess you won't shave, such a day as this, in that cold bedroom, with a stockin'-leg round your throat, an' all! You want to git your death? Why, 'twas only last night, Marthy, he had a hemlock sweat, an' all the ginger tea I could git down into him! An' then I didn't know—"
"Law! let him alone!" said Marthy, with a comfortable, throaty laugh. "He'll feel twice as well, git some o' them things off his neck. Here, Cyrus, you reach me down your mug—ain't them your shavin' things up there?—an' I'll fill it for you. You git him a piece o' flannel, Mirandy, to put on when he's washed up an' took all that stuff off his throat. Why, he's got enough wool round there, if 'twas all in yarn, to knit Old Tobe a pair o' mittins! An' they say one o' his thumbs was bigger'n the hand o' Providence. You don't want to try all the goodness out of him, do ye?"
Cyrus gave one swift glance at his wife. "There! you see!" it said plainly. "I am not without defenders." He took down his shaving-mug, with an air of some bravado. But Mirandy was no shrew; she was simply troubled about many things.
"Well," she said, compressing her lips, and wrinkling her forehead in resignation. "If folks want to kill themselves, I can't hender 'em! But when he's down ag'in, I shall be the one to take care of him, that's all. Here, Cyrus, don't you go into that cold bedroom. You shave you here, if you're determined to do it."
So Cyrus, after honing his razor, with the pleasure of a bored child provided at last with occupation, betook himself to the glass set in the lower part of the clock, and there, with much contortion of his thin visage, proceeded to shave. Mirandy put her potatoes on to boil, and set the fish on the stove to freshen; then She sat down by the window, with a great basket beside her, and began to bind shoes.
"Here," said Mrs. Wadleigh, coming to her feet and adjusting her skirt, "you give me a needle! I've got my thimble right here in my pocket. It's three months sence I've seen a shoe. I should admire to do a pair or two. I wish I could promise ye more, but somehow I'm bewitched to git over home right arter dinner!"