“Why,” says she, “milk won't make anybody crazy.”
There it wuz—she hadn't no imagination.
Says I, “I am s'posen milk, I don't mean it.” Says I, “Cicely means well.”
And so she did, sweet little soul.
But day by day I could see that her eagerness to accomplish what she had sot out to, her awful anxiety about the boy's future, wus a wearin' on her: the active, keen mind, the throbbin', achin' heart, was a wearin' out the tender body.
Her eyes got bigger and bigger every day; and her face got the solemnest, curiusest look to it, that I ever see.
And her cheeks looked more and more like the pure white blow of the Sweet Cicely, only at times there would be a red upon 'em, as if a leaf out of a scarlet rose had dropped dowrn upon their pure whiteness.
That would be in the afternoon; and there would be such a dazzlin' brightness in her eyes, that I used to wonder if it was the fire of immortality a bein' kindled there, in them big, sad eyes.
And right about this time the executor (and I wish he could have been executed with a horse-whip: he knew how she felt about it)—he wuz sot, a good man, but sot. Why, his own sir name wuz never more sot in the ground than he wuz sot on top of it. And he didn't like a woman's interference. He wrote to her that one of her stores, that he had always rented for the sale of factory-cloth and sheep's clothin', lamb's-wool blankets, and etcetery, he had had such a good offer for it, to open a new saloon and billiard-room, that he had rented it for that purpose; and he told how much more he got for it. That made 4 drinkin' saloons, that wuz in the boy's property. Every one of 'em, so Cicely felt, a drawin' some other mother's boys down to ruin.
Cicely thought of it nights a sight, so she said,—said she was afraid the curses of these mothers would fall on the boy.