the little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the handle, and poured its contents over the earth around her largest geranium. She poured the contents out to the last drop, and then she dropped the pot, and ran back and sat on her bed and cried, with her face hid in her hands.
“Now,” she said to herself, “you’ve done it! And you’re just as nasty and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as—as pusley!”
And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. “He will never give me a chance to say I am sorry,” she thought. And, really, she might have spoken kindly to the poor man, and told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he really mustn’t ask her to drink porter with him.
“But it’s all over and done now,” she said to herself as she sat at her window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and saw the faithful little pewter pot traveling slowly toward her.
She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too much for her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper:
porter is good for Flours
but better for Fokes
and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not half so red as her cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.
She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and presently she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view.