I did not gain much comfort from the conversation, however, and for years thereafter the thought of death filled me with the same choking sense of terror.
CHAPTER XVI
WOOD-CHUCKS IN THE CLOVER—ADDISON'S STRATAGEM
Creameries with ice-chests were as yet unheard of in the rural counties of Maine in 1866. At the old farm, all of the dairy milk was set in pans on the clean, cool cellar bottom. As the warm mornings of midsummer drew on, Gram was usually up by five o'clock, attending to her cream and butter; and about this time, as we issued drowsily forth, in response to the Old Squire's early rap, we were repeatedly startled at hearing a sudden eldritch exclamation which was half scream, at the foot of the bulkhead stairs.
"What's the matter down there, Ruth?" the Old Squire would exclaim.
"Dear me, I've stepped on that hateful toad again!" Gram would reply. "It's always under foot there! Do, Ellen, you get the tongs and carry that toad off again. Carry him away out to the foot of the garden, below the currant bushes. I don't see how he is forever getting back to the foot of those stairs! It gives me such a start, to put my foot on him!"
And Gram would have to sit down for a time, to fan herself and to recover her composure.