"Only middlin', Parson, only middlin'. Simply joggin', simply joggin'."
Mrs. Stickles seated herself in a splint-bottomed chair, and picked up her knitting which had been hurriedly dropped upon the arrival of Pete Davis. How her fingers did work! It was wonderful to watch them. How hard and worn they were, and yet so nimble. The needles flew with lightning rapidity, clicking against one another with a rhythmical cadence; the music of humble, consecrated work. But when Mr. Westmore began to tell about Tim Fraser, and his sudden death, the knitting dropped into her lap, and she stared at the speaker with open-eyed astonishment.
"An' do ye mean to tell me," she exclaimed, when the parson had finished, "that Tim Fraser is dead?"
"Yes, it's only too true, Mrs. Stickles. Poor man--poor man!"
"Ye may well call 'im poor, Parson, fer I'm thinkin' that's jist what he is at this blessed minute. He's in a bad way now, I reckon."
"Hush, hush, Marthy," her husband remonstrated. "We must not judge too harshly."
"I'm not, John, I'm not, an' the parson knows I'm not. But if Tim isn't sizzlin', then the Bible's clean wrong," and the needles clicked harder than ever.
"It teaches us the uncertainty of life," replied Mr. Westmore. "It shows how a man with great strength, and health can be stricken down in an instant. How important it is to be always ready when the call does come."
"Ye're right, Parson, ye're surely right," and Mrs. Stickles stopped to count her stitches. "Wasn't John an' me talkin' about that only last night. I was readin' the Bible to 'im, an' had come to that story about poor old Samson, an' his hard luck."
"'It's very strange,' sez John, sez he to me, 'that when Samson lost his hair he lost his great strength, too. I can't unnerstan' it nohow.'"