“Oh,” says she, “Miss Horn wouldn’t like it if I did.”
“Like it!” says I. “I don’t s’pose asalt and batterers love to be took up and handled for their asaltin’,” and says I, “I had jest as lives have my body salted and battered, as to have my feelin’s. Oh!” says I almost wildly, “if I had the blowin’ up of that Horn, I’d give it such a blast, that there would be no need of soundin’ on it again for years.” I spoke almost incoherently, for I was agitated to an extreme degree.
But Serepta went on to say that she had “gained thirteen ounces of flesh last winter, in one month. Miss Horn had been a visitin’ to Loontown to a brother’s who had died and left her quite a property.” And says she, “I did hear that she was goin’ to be married to a widower up there, but I don’t s’pose there is any such good news for me as that. I haint dared to lot on it much, knowin’ well what a world of sorrow and affliction this is, and knowin’ that freedom and happiness haint much likely to ever be my lot. I s’pose the chimbly and I have got to be watched jest as long as we both live.”
But she didn’t have no time to multiply any more words, for as we looked out of the buttery winder, we see her husband a walkin’ slowly along backwards and forwards with his hands under his coat tails, a composin’ a sermon, as I s’posed. But as we looked, he forgot himself, and come up bunt ag’inst the barn, and hit himself a awful blow on his forward; Serepta started off on the run to tend to him and head him off.
But that very afternoon I had a chance to speak my mind, and break her chains. Serepta and I was a settin’ there as contented and happy as you please, for Serepta was a master hand to love her home, and would have give the best ear she had, for the priviledge of bein’ let alone to make a happy home for them she loved, and take care of ’em. She was a mendin’ her 2 boys’ clothes, for they was as ragged as injuns, though truly as the poet observes,—“she was not to blame.” And I also was a tryin’ in my feeble way to help her and put a seat into the biggest little boy’s pantaloons; we had got ’em to bed for that purpose. And as we sot and worked, we could hear ’em in the room overhead, a throwin’ the pillers, and talkin’ language that for minister’s childern was scandelous—for she had had to let ’em run loose, though to quote again the words of the poet,—“she was not to blame,” havin’ got it into her head that it was her duty to carry the meetin’ house.
Well, as I was a sayin’, we was a settin’ there, when all of a sudden, without no warnin’ of no kind, the door opened without no rappin’ on it, or anything, and in walked what I supposed at the time, was the hull meetin’ house; I was so wild at first as I beheld ’em, that I almost expected to see ’em bring in the steeple. I was skairt. But I found by strict measurement, when my senses come back, that there wasn’t only sixteen wimmen, and two childern and one old deacon. I heerd afterwards, that he was the only man they could git to come with ’em to labor with Serepta. (He was old as the hills, and dretful childish, so they got round him.)
Men has their faults. None can be more deeply sensible of that great truth than I am, as I often tell Josiah. But truly, so far as gossip and meddlin’ and interferin’ with your neighbor’s business is concerned, wimmen is fur ahead of the more opposite sect. It is mysterious that it should be so, but so it is, factorum.
A VISIT FROM THE CHURCH.
Serepta looked white as a white ghost, and ready to sink right down through the floor into the suller, for from past experience she knew they had come to labor with her. But I held firm as any rock you can bring up, Plymouth, or Bunker Hill, or any of ’em. And when they glared at me, thank fortin I was enabled to do what duty and inclination both called on me to do, and glare back at ’em, and do a good job in the line o’ glarin’ too.