Miss Garlock seemed real agitated and excited, and I remembered hearin’ that forenoon that they had lost a relation considerable distant to ’em. He lived some fifteen or sixteen miles away.
He and Eben Garlock’s folks had never agreed; in fact, they had hated each other the worst kind. But now Miss Garlock, bein’ made as she wuz, wuz all nerved up to make a good appearance to the funeral and show off.
She had come to borry my mournin’ suit that I had used to mourn for Josiah’s mother in; and I am that careful of my clothes that they wuz as good as new, though I had mourned in ’em for a year. Mournin’ for some folks hain’t half so hard on clothes as mournin’ for others; tears spots black crape awful, and sithes are dretful hard on whalebones; my clothes wuz good, good as new.
But I am a eppisodin’, and to resoom.
Miss Garlock wanted to borry my hull suit down to shoes and stockin’s for Eben’s mother, who lived with her. She herself wuz a goin’ to borry Miss Slimpsey’s dress—she that wuz Betsey Bobbets—it wuz trimmed more and more foamin’ lookin’. But she wanted my black fan for herself, and my mournin’ handkerchief pin, it bein’ a very showy one. Ury had gin it to me, and I never had mourned in it but once, and then not over two hours, at a church social, for I felt it wuz too dressy for me. But Miss Garlock had seen it on that occasion and admired it.
And then, after I had told her she could have all these things in welcome, she kinder took me out to one side and asked me “if I had jest as lives lend her a Bible for a few days. She thought like as not the minister would call to talk with Eben’s mother, and she felt that she should be mortified if he should call for a Bible, for they had all run out of Bibles,” she said.
“The last one they had by ’em had jest been chawed up by a pup Eben wuz a raisin’; she had ketched him a worryin’ it out under the back stoop. She said he had chawed it all up but a part o’ the Old Testament, and he wuz a worryin’ and gnawin’ Maleky when she got it away from him.”
Wall, I told her she could have the Bible, and she asked me to have the things done up by the time they got back from Miss Slimpsey’s, and I told her I would, and I did.
Wall, if you’d believe it, I had hardly got them things done up in a bundle and laid ’em on the table ready for Miss Garlock, when that blessed man, John Richard, commenced agin right where he left off, and sez he, a repeatin’ his last words as calmly as if there had been no Garlock eppisode.