“I never thought that Miss Morton was any too good.”
“Neither did I,” said Lucinda Dagget.
“She has turned out jest as I always thought she would,” says Ophelia, “and I think jest as much of her, as I do of them that stand up for her.” Maggie Snow spoke up then, jest as clear as a bell her voice sounded. She hain’t afraid of anybody, for she is Lawyer Snow’s only child, and has been to Boston to school. Says she “Aunt Allen,” she is a little related to me on her mother’s side. “Aunt Allen, why is it as a general rule, the worst folks are the ones to suspect other people of bein’ bad.”
Says I, “Maggy, they draw their pictures from memery, they think, ‘now if I had that opportunity to do wrong, I should certainly improve it—and so of course they did.’ And they want to pull down other folks’es reputations, for they feel as if their own goodness is in a totterin’ condition, and if it falls, they want somethin’ for it to fall on, so as to come down easier like.”
Maggy Snow laughed, and so did Squire Edwards’ wife, and the Jones’es—but Betsey Bobbet, and the Dagget girls looked black as Erobius. And says Betsey Bobbet to me, “I shouldn’t think, Josiah Allen’s wife, that you would countenance such conduct.”
“I will first know that there is wrong conduct,” says I—“Miss Morton’s face is just as innocent as a baby’s, and I hain’t a goin’ to mistrust any evil out of them pretty brown eyes, till I am obleeged to.”
“Well, you will have to believe it,” says Ophelia Dagget—“and there shall be somethin’ done about it as sure as my name is Ophelia Dagget.”
“Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone,” says Miss Squire Edwards—a better Baptist women never lived than she is.
“Yes,” says I in almost piercen’ tones, “which of us is good enough to go into the stun business? Even supposin’ it was true, which I never will believe on earth, which of us could stun her on gospel grounds?—who will you find that is free from all kind of sin?” and as I spoke, remorseful thoughts almost knocked against my heart, how I had scolded Josiah the night before for goin’ in his stockin feet.
“I never see a female women yet that I thought was perfect, and yet how willin’ they are to go to handlin’ these stuns—why wimmen fling enough stuns at each other every day, to make a stun wall that would reach from pole to pole.”