Well, that broke that up, but Arabeller went about the house real surly, and Cicero, though he didn’t say much, had such mysterious looks that I most knew he wuz meditatin’ rapine or burglarly or sunthin’ or ruther. But, as it come out afterwards, he wuz plannin’ to carry Arabeller off into his cave and keep her there till he could bring a clergyman stealthily to the trysting place to unite them. That all happened after I wuz there. But I worried about him considerable nights after I went to bed, and wondered sadly how it would all come out.
But to resoom backwards. The next mornin’ after we went there Tamer got a good breakfast. She wuz sufferin’ from sinevetus, she said, and wuz dretful afraid of basler menigitus, but they didn’t hender her from gittin’ a first rate meal—good steak, creamed potatoes, hot rolls, coffee, etc., and she did it almost all herself, for Anna had her work to do, and Arabeller couldn’t git a good meal to save her life.
CHAPTER IX
Well, after breakfast Tamer and I wuz in the settin’ room both on us sewin’, for I had took a fine shirt of Josiah’s to finish, and she wuz embroiderin’ some lace ruffles to trim a skirt for Anna.
“Tamer, I should think such work would be hard on your basiler disease, whatever it is. Hain’t it dretful hard to embroider that fine lace?”
“Yes, Josiah Allen’s wife, it is hard, but you know I don’t mind any labor or any care if I can advance my children’s happiness, you know jest how I watch over their interests and am willing to spend and be spent in their service.”
And she bent closter still over the fine complicated stitches of that wearisome lookin’ embroidery, and I thought and couldn’t help it, if you would spend half or a quarter of the time you spend in ornamentin’ the bodies of your children, in lookin’ out for their souls and hearts, and studyin’ their welfare, you would come out better in the end.
And at this very minute little Jack come in lookin’ bright as the mornin’, which wuz very fair. He wuz dressed up slick and clean in a little blue suit, with a deep collar braided painfully by Tamer Ann in fine black braid, and all up and down the side of his little legs that fine embroidery run. And Tamer begun to charge him the minute he got into the room to not run round out doors for fear he would soil that beautiful new suit. “You know,” sez she, “your Ma done that for you when she couldn’t hardly lift her head from the pillow. It almost killed your Ma, that work did.”