“I don’t understand things much, John, and sometimes I make your sister Nancy feel ashamed of me, John; but I mean right, I do—and we’ve got a baby—we have, and it’s e’ena’most as purty as Hope Vines.”
“You don’t forget Hope?”
“No, John, no; I didn’t think of her as the women think I did—never, never! She was like a born angel to me—like a cherubim on a tombstone. Somehow I felt as if I could pray to her. My mother said I was bewitched, and you was bewitched, and I believed it. I know better now, John. I’ve thought it out.”
“And you love your old playmate yet, Ephraim, and you know and hear nothing of Hope?”
“No, John, not a word. But, look here—she was doomed, like, from the fust. I used to feel as if I should cry, to look at her eyes.”
“I never saw any thing strange in her—nothing but truth and goodness.”
“All that, John, but not the kind to wring out a dishcloth or sweep a kitchen. Women don’t like them that don’t do jest as all the rest of them duz.”
“That is true. What then?”
“Don’t you remember that Hope would whistle up a quail, with that purty cherry month of hern? Well, the women used to look askance at this, and say—I’ve heard Nancy say it a hundred times—”