Wall, from that night, Miss Trueman Pool attended to the meetins at the Risley school-house, stiddy and constant. And before the week wuz out Joe Charnick had walked home with her twice. And the next week he carried her to Jonesville to get the cloth for her robe, jest like his'n, white book muslin. And twice he had come to consult her on a Bible passage, and twice she had walked up to his mother's to consult with her on a passage in the Apockraphy. And once she went up to see if her wings wuz es deep and full es his'n. She wanted 'em jest the same size.
Miss Charnick couldn't bear her. Miss Charnick wuz a woman who had enjoyed considerble poor health in her life, and she had now, and had been havin' for years, some dretful bad spells in her stomach—a sort of a tightness acrost her chest. And Trueman's wife argued with her that her spells had been worse, and her chest had been tighter. And the old lady didn't like that at all, of course. And the old lady took thoroughwert for 'em, and Trueman's wife insisted on't that thoroughwert wuz tightenin'.
And then there wuz some chickens in a basket out on the stoop, that the old hen had deserted, and Miss Charnick wuz a bringin' 'em up by hand. And Mother Chainick went out to feed 'em, and Trueman's wife tosted her head and said, “she didn't approve of it—she thought a chicken ought to be brung up by a hen.”
But Miss Charnick said, “Why, the hen deserted 'em; they would have perished right there in the nest.”
But Trueman's wife wouldn't gin in, she stuck right to it, “that it wuz a hen's business, and nobody else's.”
And of course she had some sense on her side, for of course it is a hen's business, her duty and her prevelege to bring up her chickens. But if she won't do it, why, then, somebody else has got to—they ought to be brung. I say Mother Charnick wuz in the right on't. But Trueman's wife had got so in the habit of findin' fault, and naggin' at me, and the other relations on Trueman's side and hern, that she couldn't seem to stop it when she knew it wuz for her interest to stop.
And then she ketched a sight of the alpacker dress Jenette wuz a-makin' and she said “that basks had gone out.”
And Miss Charnick was over partial to 'em (most too partial, some thought), and thought they wuz in the height of the fashion. But Trueman's wife ground her right down on it.
“Basks wuz out, fer she knew it, she had all her new ones made polenay.”
And hearin' 'em argue back and forth for more'n a quarter of an hour, Jenette put in and sez (she thinks all the world of Mother Charnick), “Wall, I s'pose you won't take much good of your polenays, if you have got so little time to wear 'em.”