"I am a telling of you as fast as ever I can; which she never would a been reskeed neither, if it hadn't a been for that there blessed flood, which you don't even want me to tell about," complained Miss Tabby.
"Tell me about the reskee!" commanded Mrs. Winterose, peremptorily.
"Well, then, just as I had discovered as the waters had ris' almost up to the level of the windows, and was even oozing through the walls like dew, and rising higher every minute, and I was in deadly fear of our lives, and screeching as loud as I could screech, for some one to come and let us out, which nobody could hear us because of the hollering, and bawling, and running, and racing, and banging, and slamming of doors and windows, and all the rout and rumpus made by the people as were trying to save their own lives, suddenly the window was busted in. And before I had time to say my prayers, in jumped a big man followed by a little man."
"Lor!" exclaimed Mrs. Winterose and Miss Libby, in a breath.
"And the big man, in all his haste and hurry, he took her up, Sybil, as tenderly, and wrapped her up as carefully as if he had a been her mother. He cussed some about the baby, which was a sort of surprise to him; but Raphael—-"
"Raphael!" exclaimed Mrs. Winterose and Miss Libby, in a breath.
"Yes, Raphael! He was the little man I soon discovered. Raphael pleaded for the baby, and so the big man he let him save her; but he said how he must leave the 'ole 'oman' meaning me, to be drownded, though goodness, knows, for that matter, I wasn't so old as to be tired of life, being only just turned of thirty-three—"
"Oh, bother about your age, Tabby! tell us about the reskee!" snapped her mother.
"An't I a telling of you as fast as I can? But he did call me an ole 'oman, and me not thirty-four then, which I would say it if I was to die for it, and he would a left me to be drownded, but Raphael he pled for me like he did for the baby, and the waters was rising higher and higher, and the uproar in the prison was getting louder and louder, and the big man he swore at Raphael, and told him to fetch me on; but first he made me swear on the Bible never to tell how we was reskeed. Then he took us off on the boat which I tell you, mother, it was just awful to be a riding on the high floods over the tops of the houses. It had done raining, which was a good thing for my poor child, who was well wrapped up also. They rowed me up to the Quarries, and put me out high, and on a ledge of the mountain, and rowed away with my child, and that's the last I ever saw or heard of her or her baby until that letter come to Mr. Berners, a telling of him how she was took off to foreign parts, and a releasing of me from my oath of silence."
"But you never told us, for all that."