“Oh, Lordy, Lordy, what ’ll she say, ’n’ what ’ll I do with it?” he moaned to himself, completely caught in the trap set by his own greed.
“I dunno,” shouted Mrs. Jason as she moved away, “’nless you put wheels on it to make a wagon and hitch that sorrel mare I sold you to it.”
******
The day of the sale drew near. All that remained to be done was the destroying of the rubbish, and this was no small task.
One entire day a bonfire had raged in the back lot, and what would not burn was the next day taken in the ox-cart thrice filled by Joshua himself and dumped carefully in the great bog-hole.
This quaking bog was one of the wonders of the neighbourhood and its common dumping ground, even though it could only be reached by fording the river above the mill-pond. To the eye it was merely an oozy-looking swamp tract, such as are plentiful near the back-water of rivers, but this particular bit was an ogre that swallowed up everything that was cast in it, only a few hours being necessary to engulf, without leaving a sign, an unlucky cow that had once strayed into it. So that now it was securely fenced about except at one spot, used for dumping, which was protected with logs secured to driven piles.
Mrs. Lane watched the loading of the wagon very ruefully, for she now fully realized that all her hopes concerning the fruit farm had come to as complete an end as the load of broken china and rusty tinware. When she saw the old pewter tea-pot, the dents supplemented by a crack, go by on top of a basket of broken flower pots, she begged her husband to let her keep it, saying:—
“Even if it’s worth nothin’ now, even for drawin’ tea, Aunt Jimmy must hev meant somethin’ kind when she left it to me, and I’d like it to mind me of the idea, only she got fogged up some way and didn’t plan right; fer if she set store by anything, it was by that pot on account of its bein’ buried half of the Revolution with great-grandmother Cuddy’s best teaspoons and twenty gold guineas all safe inside.”
“Lauretta Ann,” said Joshua, pausing to rest the heavy basket on the tail-board of the cart, “’tain’t often I put my foot down, but now they’ve set, heel and toe, sock and leather, both of ’em. I’m goin’ to do my work legal, but you’ve been treated shabby, and I ain’t a-goin’ to hev that tea-pot set up on a shelf for a moniment to that same. If you’re too Christian to resent, I’m goin’ to do it for yer, which she, bein’ my aunt, the quarrel is for me to take upon me, so there!”