CHAPTER XIV
DEVOTED TO COATS AND CASE-KNIVES
"'He moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform,'" chanted Mrs. Ray, briskly, turning from the stove, with a hot iron in her hand, towards the visitor then entering the door. "Yes, I'm just pressing the seams. The mail was awful late—they had a bad wreck on the road, killed three pigs—and the crowd is just gone. When the mail's late I'm always late, too. Yes, indeed. Those two in love come up for the hotel mail, while that poor, blind thing went over alone to look at what she fondly supposes is going to be her happy home. Take a chair. How's Lottie Ann? And, Mrs. Wiley, what do you think about those case-knives in the bureau drawer?" for the case-knives were now the main topic of conversation all over Ledge and its attendant villages.
Mrs. Wiley had dropped in to see how her new winter jacket, now in process of active manufacture, was getting on. She sank down on a seat with a sigh which the chair echoed in a groan.
"Oh, I don't know what to do," she said, wearily. "Uncle Purchase came yesterday for a week, driving his colts, and last night one of the colts had colic; and Lottie Ann gets thinner every day. Seems like I do have so much trouble. Sister Anna got so tired with the improvements she's making, that she just up and off for Buffalo Wednesday, and that left Eliza to run things; and Eliza up and bit a chestnut and broke two teeth, so she had to go off to Rochester yesterday early. That leaves me with the whole thing now, and I'm running back and forth between houses from dawn to dark. I wanted to make the dress for Cousin Dolly's graduation, too, and the sewing machine always does for my legs; and yesterday here come Uncle Purchase!"
"Joey Beall is all used up over those case-knives," said Mrs. Ray, pressing assiduously; "he won't say what he thinks."
"How's it getting on?" asked Mrs. Wiley, hitching her chair nearer to the ironing-board. "Oh, Mrs. Ray, you'll never know the sacred feelings this coat will give me in church. Father was a true Christian, I always have that to remember. He had his faults, but he was a true Christian. Whatever went through his hands in the week, it was the plate at church that they held on Sunday."
"You don't need to worry over your father, Mrs. Wiley," said Mrs. Ray; "nobody doubted his religion—it was only that he charged such awful interest."
Mrs. Wiley sighed. "I know," she said; "it wasn't so much what he charged as bothered—"