“The sieve must be held right end up or you can’t sift through it; hold it sideways or bottom end up, and where be you?
“No; old Miss Hosey and Miss Maleky, I dare presume to say, jest wrastled round with household cares and left them old men as free as they could.
“I’ll bet the minds of them good old prophets wuzn’t opset with pickin’ geese and ketchin’ gobblers, or makin’ hens set, or fastenin’ down the tent stakes if the wind come up sudden in the night.
“No; I’ll bet Miss Hosey, that good old creeter, got up herself and hung onto them flappin’ ends and drove down the stakes herself, so’s Mr. Hosey could get a little sleep. Or if little Isaac, or Lemuel, or Rebeckah Hosey wuz took sudden with the croup or infantum, I’ll bet it wuzn’t old Mr. Hosey that got up and hunted round for the goose oil, or groped his way round and started up a fire, and steeped catnip, and heat cloths, and applied ’em.
“No; it wuz that good old female creeter every time, I wouldn’t be afraid to say it wuz.
“And ten to one if her pardner didn’t wake up and ask her ‘what she wuz makin’ such a noise for in the middle of the night, and tell her she wuz jest spilin’ them children a indulgin’ ’em so, and if she had kep’ their sandals on, they wouldn’t have took cold,’ etc., etc., etc.
“And then if she got into bed agin with cold feet he complained bitterly of that.
“And so, I dare presume to say Miss Hosey or Miss Maleky, as the case might be, sot up with them children, pulled one way by her devoted affection for ’em, and the other way by her wifely love, and tried to keep ’em as still as she could, and shet up them babies if they went to cry, for her husband’s sake, and tried to doctor ’em up for their own sake, and felt meachin’ through it all, borne down by the weight of her husband’s onmerited blame and fault-findin’.
“And the next mornin’, I dare presume to say, she went round with a headache, and got as good a breakfast as she could with what she had to do with; and if her husband waked up feelin’ kind o’ chirk and said a kind word to her, or kissed her, I dare say she forgot all her troubles and thought she had the best husband in the world, and she wouldn’t change places with anybody on earth.
“For female human nater is about the same from Eve down to she that wuz Samantha Smith.