"Well, I'm roastin' a young possum along with the squirrel stew, so you'd better work up an appetite," she said in a mollified tone at at the end of her lecture, as though she were desirous of infusing a more ardent spirit into them before her departure.
When the barn door closed behind her, a sigh of relief, half stifled through fear of detection, passed round the group.
"Thar goes a woman in a thousand," observed old Adam, edging nearer the bin.
"In a million—let's make it a million," urged Solomon Hatch.
"If they were all like that the world would be different, Mr.
Doolittle," remarked Jim Halloween.
"Ah, yes, it would be different," agreed old Adam, and he sighed again.
"Thar'd be strict walkin' among us, I reckon," said his son.
"An' a chalk line the same as we draw for the sex," added Solomon Hatch.
"Sin would be scarce then an' life earnest," remarked William Ming, who had alluded to Betsey in the most distant terms ever since he had married her.
"We'd abide by the letter like the women, not by the spirit as we do," reflected Solomon.