The widow was already courted by three men, all reputable widowers and church members. Now that the windows were opened and Doll sang as she worked, and her own mind was taken up with her suitors, she did not fear her so much. Each went her own way.
Doll had always shown a dawdling and trifling attitude towards honest labour. And in this offence Bilby had encouraged her. For he had had her out in the woods and the fields (where there was nothing a young female could do) with himself, instead of leaving her at home to serve Hannah, as would have been more proper.
Now that he was gone, Doll still continued in her childish and frivolous wanderings. She often sat herself on the stone fence by the willow brook which divided the lands of the Bilbys and the Thumbs. The bonded boys upon the farm said they often saw her sitting upon the stone fence and feeding small rotten apples to Ahab (whose ferocity now had grown hideous). Yet this girl patted him freely, talking to him, laying her face against his cheek, and all these attentions Ahab accepted of. She wished him for her familiar, but the creature (so she told Mr. Zelley) would never do one of the things she asked of him, except to pursue and render ridiculous young Thumb.
Mrs. Thumb heard that her black bull was often down on the boundary with Bilby’s Doll. She asked that he be penned, for she guessed that Doll was at the bottom of Ahab’s remarkable dissatisfaction in Titus. She wished the bull withdrawn from the young woman’s influence. By so doing and thus making these fields by the willow brook safe to cross, she did great harm to her own household, for now it was Labour and Sorrow who came daily (if they could) to see Doll. Undoubtedly she had been waiting for the twins to come and play with her. She must have seen in these weak and disobedient little girls fit matter for her to work upon to the further enlargement of the Kingdom of Hell. For she lay in wait there, and finally they came to her. They came slyly. No one at first knew they came, and they played at ungodly games, furtively, where no one of either house could know. Thus passed September, and October, and the half of November.
2
The Horrible Example of the Thumb Twins, or to what a Pass Disobedience may bring a Child.
Doubtless some who read these words will recall how in childhood they were brought to obedience and wholesome respect for authority by hearing a mother, or grannie, or aunt, or servant tell them the awful story of the Thumb twins, and to what their disobedience brought them. It is true that these children had never been well, and for them to fall from health to point of death was not a long fall. Nor when one considers what good use has been made of their example, and how many other children have learned decent docility from their story, can one wholly regret the incident which occurred as follows.
On the twentieth day of November (the day had been a mellow, warm, yellow day) the disobedient Labour and Sorrow went to the willow brook, and there found, as they hoped to find, the witch-woman awaiting them. She was all in fine scarlet as her fancy was. The children said they dared not stay and play—their mother had sent them to Goody Greene’s to buy mints. She would wonder if they did not return within the hour. They said (a long time later) that Doll smiled at them in a terrible fashion and suggested to them that what their mother wanted was of no importance. But the twins for once were mindful of their good mother’s wishes. They said again they could not stay. They had only come to tell her that they could not stay. ‘Well, take that then,’ said the witch, and angrily tossed across the brook and to their feet two dolls that she had contrived out of corn husks and pumpkin seeds. So she went away, and the twins went to Greene’s.
They came home again and they were late as usual, or rather as always, for they were dawdling, mischievous children. Their mother was angry with them. She could not whip nor even shake them. She dared not, they were too feeble. She put them to bed without their dinner and there they lay to supper-time, talking and whispering, laughing to each other. She bade them get up for supper. They would not, but lay in their bed. No one thought further of them until morning. The truth is that, having no dinner and no supper, they grew hungry and so they ate the dollies, which were made mostly of pumpkin seeds. The pumpkin in all its parts, even the seeds of it, is wholesome food. It could not be this that sickened the children, yet from that day they sickened.