"Bill, go up to Ford Hill and find out about that funeral," is her entreaty on the eve of the event.
Bill has been raking with the horse-rake, or, worse, mowing pease all day. Whatever you have to do in this world, if you have ever mowed pease, that you will acknowledge to be the hardest work you have ever done. Bill is tired. There is a hole in the toe of his boot into which a stiff pea-straw has thrust itself once in five minutes all day—a circumstance exhausting to the nervous system of a hired man. And he had the heifer to hunt before milking. The old cows wait at the bars to come up, but the heifer stays a mile away at the top of the pasture. Bill can see her every night lying with her ears pricked up against the sky, and never stirring until she feels a pebble against her forehead. Then she gallops homeward as if remembering that Bill's motto is a kick in time saves nine. However, Bill likes to accommodate. "I'm off like a pot-leg," says he.
"What time is it to be?" asks the hired girl when he returns.
"I forgot to ask," he replies.
"Who's a-going to preach?"
"Nobody said," is the answer.
"Is it at the house or church?"
"I didn't think to find out," returns he.
"Well, you are a nimshi!" declares she.
"Go yourself next time," rejoins he.