“That is so.”
“Hiram and me get along most anywhere. We have a bit of money,—not overmuch. We are both pretty handy, and once we tried it two years down South, at Marysville, in Alabama. That was a right nice place for snakes.”
“Gracious Heavens! You talk as if you liked them.”
“Well, they’re handsome, and brave, and don’t want to hurt you; and how many men can you say that about?”
“A fair defense,” said Anne; “but what of Sairy Kitchins? I love a story; I am like a child.”
“Well, Sairy she had just come that spring. She was the wife of one of them Methodist preachers that don’t be let to bide long anywhere,—the kind that goes about the land seeking whom they may devour. As I came along the road with her there was a six-foot rattler lying right across in the sun. Down went Sairy on her knees. ‘Good lands!’ said I, ‘what’s the good prayin’ to that reptile? A whole camp-meeting couldn’t convert him.’ Well, we couldn’t get by him, and so I got a good, big stick of live oak, and fetched him a crack on the head, and one or two more to make sure. Then I said, ‘Come along, Sairy; he won’t sin any more; if that fool of a woman, Eve, had had any sense, and a live-oak stick handy, there wouldn’t have been no need of you and me going to meeting this hot day.’”
“I should think not,” cried Anne, laughing. “And what did Sairy say? I am quite on her side.”
“Oh, she told her husband, and I got prayed over a heap. It’s amazing how clear those preachers see the sins of other people.”
“I think it a delightful story. I shall tell the boys to-night. I haven’t laughed as much in a month.”
“Dear me! It must be ten o’clock,” said Mrs. Maybrook, looking up at the sun, “and I must see Mrs. Lyndsay, and go home to cook Hiram’s dinner. But I would like to see the house. You know last year they tented. When I was here yesterday no one was about, and so I did not go in to look. I was dying to see it.”