“Et’s th’ barley. I knowed S’briny’d traipse off ’n’ leave it. She allus does;” said Alvira, flinging open the oven door, and dragging out with her apron a smoking pan of scorched grain.
Through the dense, pungent smudge which temporarily filled the room, Samantha was heard to remark with offensive emphasis: “We allus drink genu-wine coffee over to M’tildy’s. She’s mean enough ’baout some things, but she wouldn’t make us swell ourselves aout with no barley-wash.”
“’N’ sao do we here, tew—all but S’briny!” retorted Alvira, indignantly. “She got use’ to drinkin’ it in war-times, when yeh couldn’t git reel coffee fur love n’r money, jes’ ez all th’ other farm-folks did. On’y she’s more contrary ’n’ th’ rest, ’n’ she wouldn’t drink nothin’ else naow, not ef yeh poured it into her maouth with a funnel. But go on ’th yer yarn!”
Samantha had to cough a little, on account of the smoke, and then it took her some moments to collect the thread of her narrative. But at last even the spirit of Tantalus could invent no further delay, and she proceeded:
“Well, she didn’t say much, fer a fact, but they was business in ev’ry word she did say. Fust she hollered aout—right aout, I tell yeh: ‘Et’s a wicked lie! She’s a bad, wicked woman! ’ Then she stopped fer awhile ’n’ put her han’s up to her for’id—like this. Then she shuk herself, ’n’ commenced to climb back over th’ stile, but she seemed to think better of it, ’n’ started fer her own haouse, like’s ef she was a walkin’ in her sleep, ’n’ a groanin’ to herself: ‘Seth a murd’rer! Seth a murd’rer!’ Thet’s what I heerd!”
The girl put both feet up on the stove hearth, and tilted her chair back in conscious triumph. “Got ’n’ apple handy?” she inquired of Alvira, carelessly, in the tone of one whose position in life was assured.
To this strange recital, involving such terrible suggestions, there succeeded a full minute of silence in the kitchen, broken only by the ponderous clucking of the high wooden clock. Alvira and Melissa looked at each other dumbly—each for once willing to forego the first word.
“Well, what d’yeh say to thet?” finally asked Melissa.
After some reflection, Alvira answered, “I sh’d say S’manthy was a lyin’.”
“S’elp me die, crisscross, I ain’t!” protested the girl at the stove: “I’ve told it all, jest’s it happened, straight’s a string. Where’s yer apples?”