Mrs. Simpson arrested her pantomime with a jerk, and sitting very erect, quivering with righteous wrath and excitement over the exclusive information she possessed, she said:
“I’m real well—I am. I only thought—but I guess I’m keeping you; p’raps you’ve got other things to do. Isn’t Lanty needin’ you?”
“No,” said Mabella, “Lanty is not needing me. What made you think that? And I hope you’ll stay to tea. I’ve just put the kettle forward.”
“No—I can’t stay,” said Mrs. Simpson. “I only came to visit for a while and I’ve stayed and stayed.” Mrs. Simpson had at the moment but one desire on earth, which was to spread the news of Lanty’s fall.
“I sort o’ promised to visit Mrs. Ranger this week. I’ve visited a long spell with you now. I guess I’ll be going on. My! How like her father that young one do grow!”
“Yes, doesn’t she?” said Mabella, and the gladness in her voice was unfeigned.
Mrs. Simpson took the goose quill out of her apron band, in which her knitting needle rested, and measured the stocking she was knitting with her second finger.
“Well!” she said, “I declare I’ve done a full half finger sence I been settin’ here! This is my visitin’ knittin’. I hain’t done a loop in this stockin’ but what’s been done in the neighbours’. I cast it on up to Vashti’s. My soul! I never can come to callin’ her nothing but Vashti, if she be the minister’s wife! I cast it on up there, and the preacher he was real took up with the three colours of yarn being used at once. He sez, sez he: ‘Why, Mrs. Simpson, you’re all three fates in one: you have the three threads in your own hands.’ Then he said to Vashti, ‘That would be fittin’ work for you, Vashti.’ Well, I knowed Vashti could never manoover them three threads at once, but I didn’t say nothin’, bein’ as I thought he was took up with the stockin’ and wanted Vashti to make him some. Then he told about some woman named Penellepper that was great on knittin’. The only girl I ever knowed by that name was Penellepper Shinar, and she certingly was a great knitter; she used to knit herself open-work white-thread stockings. Well, she came to a fine end with her vanities! I wonder if ’twas her Mr. Martin meant? Folks did say she was living gay in Boston, though ’twas said too that she went fur west somewheres and school-teached. Suz! It would be queer if ’twas her Mr. Martin meant!”
“Mr. Martin gets all those stories out of old books, in learned tongues,” said Mabella simply. “When he stayed at the farm he used to tell us all sorts of stories.”