“There is somethin’ boun’ ter happen!” said Rosetta to Abraham. “Whenever them young ones is still a minute it’s ’cause they’re a-hatchin’ out fresh monkey-shines. They hain’t any on ’em done nothin’ out o’ the beaten track this week er more. Not since Miss Ruth was to home.”
“Wall, I shouldn’t think ye’d hanker to hev ’em step off the ‘beaten track,’ as ye tell about. I’ve noticed that when they does step off they mostly steps a good pace. There was Octavy, now, who’d ever thort of a gal a-turnin’ a hull hay-riggin’ over on top of her; but she done it an’ come out purty near as good as ever. Reckon she is—jest as well as she was afore, an’ ’pears ter be gettin’ as plump as a pa’tridge. But Pauly, she don’t never seem to get inter no scrapes, like the rest on ’em.”
“Humph!” retorted Rosetta, drawing off the yellow buttermilk for Abraham to carry away to the pigs. “She got inter one the very fust night she arriv’. She scairt the life clean out o’ poor Mis’ Capers, but you seem ter fergit thet.”
“I hain’t bed no chance ter fergit it, bein’s ye keep talkin’ ’bout it. But don’t ye worry; this here Sunday-meetin’ sort of doin’s ain’t a-goin’ ter last long enough ter hurt us. My! but that buttermilk is rich!” And, wiping his lips on his shirt-sleeve, the farmer walked away stywards.
It is rarely safe to prophesy evil. It seemed as if the very mention of “scrapes” was enough, in that household, to induce one.
All summer long the pigs, which were the pride of Abraham’s heart, had been allowed to run about in some fields, and get their living pretty much as they would have done in a native state. But haying was over, and the good man had more time to devote to his “stawk” than he had had during that busy season just past. It appeared to him time to begin “fattenin’,” and that very day he had driven the pigs into a nearby enclosure, intending to shut them into their pens at night and feed them there.
For that purpose he had collected all the buttermilk Rosetta had to spare, and, walking noiselessly along over the grass-grown path, he raised the pail to the top of the high, board fence above the trough and emptied the contents in one mighty swish.
Though his eyes had been diverted by the gambols of some kittens in a tree, his feet had “almost gone theirselves” over the familiar way which led to the “fattening” quarters of many pigs departed long since, and it was an almost mechanical motion which had emptied the pail.
There was nothing mechanical, however, about the yells and shrieks which followed, nor in the tremendous jump which Abraham’s long limbs made backwards. The startled man stumbled over a milking-stool which he had also brought along, and landed beneath the kittens’ tree with a thud which sent them shying still farther upwards.
Then two heads appeared over the sty-wall, and two very red and angry faces gleamed from amid a flood of thick and clinging buttermilk.