"'Pears like you're a sight of trouble to yourself."
"I aim to make me a nightgown, maw, but I won't know how to make no pretty one, like them," sighed Ruthena.
"Oh, yes, you will; we'll show you how, and help you," said Amy.
The two, being at last undressed, knelt by the bedside to say their prayers. Aunt Ailsie tipped excitedly out of the door and clutched Uncle Lot's arm.
"You allowed them was wrong women, and runaway wives," she whispered, "Come watch at 'em down on their knees a-praying, as pretty as angels."
She drew him to the door, and he looked on, evidently much impressed. Once or twice he shook his head.
Then Aunt Ailsie and Ruthena took off their shoes and heavy, home-knitted stockings, and went to bed in the rest of their clothing; while the three least ones, being barefooted, turned in, just as they were, with their mother, and the five older ones reluctantly departed to kitchen and loft. Uncle Lot then sauntered in, threw out the stick of light-wood, and, shedding brogans, socks, and trousers, took his place beside Aunt Ailsie, all conversing casually meanwhile. Evidently the process of "laying down" was not regarded as one requiring privacy, or to be accompanied by any self-consciousness or false modesty.
In the morning, before sunrise, the guests were awakened by a blast of the gourd-horn, calling the men in from the stables; and jumping into their clothes, they washed their faces on the back porch, smoothed their hair, and hurried in to breakfast.
The table was again loaded with fried chicken, fried eggs, string beans, potatoes, cucumbers, biscuits, corn-bread, three kinds of pie, and six varieties of preserves. Uncle Lot himself was almost pleasant. Aunt Ailsie took advantage of the thaw to say, when the meal was nearly over:—
"Uncle Ephraim Kent is a-getting larning, paw. Amy here is a-teaching him, and he is going through the primer fast, and allows to read his grandsir's old Bible afore the summer's over."