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CHARITY AND EVERGREEN
I
“Well, for my part, I could never, never forgive a man who did such a thing!”
It was late in the afternoon of a clear, cold day in December when Charity Holmes, sitting in the midst of a spicy mound of evergreen on Farmer Ralston’s kitchen floor, and looking up from her work with a bright flush on her pretty cheeks, made this severe remark. Of the three other women in the room, two, the farmer’s daughters, young girls like herself, were quite of her opinion; but the fourth, a white-haired old lady with lavender bows on her cap and sunshine in her motherly face, patted the nearest indignant girl’s shoulder reprovingly, and remarked:
“There, there, dears; don’t be so hard. We’re all of us human, and drink’s a terrible thing. Sometimes it don’t seem any more a man’s fault than tumbling into a hole in the road.”
“But if he has dug the hole himself, grandmother”—