THE VARIOUS TEMPERS OF GRANDMOTHER GREGG.
WHEN the doctor drove by the Gregg farm about dusk, and saw old Deacon Gregg perched cross-legged upon his own gate-post, he knew that something was wrong within, and he could not resist the temptation to drive up and speak to the old man.
It was common talk in the neighborhood that when Grandmother Gregg made things too warm for him in-doors, the good man, her spouse, was wont to stroll out to the front gate and to take this exalted seat.
Indeed, it was said by a certain Mrs. Frequent, a neighbor of prying proclivities and ungentle speech, that the deacon’s wife sent him there as a punishment for misdemeanors. Furthermore, this same Mrs. Frequent did even go so far as to watch for the deacon, and when she would see him laboriously rise and resignedly poise himself upon the narrow area, she would remark:
“Well, I see Grandma Gregg has got the old man punished again. Wonder what he’s been up to now?”
Her constant repetition of the unkind charge finally gained for it such credence that the diminutive figure upon the gate-post became an object of mingled sympathy and mirth in the popular regard.
The old doctor was the friend of a lifetime, and he was sincerely attached to the deacon, and when he turned his horse’s head toward the gate this evening, he felt his heart go out in sympathy to the old man in durance vile upon his lonely perch.