University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.
GOSSIP.

THE waves of the ocean do not succeed and
obliterate one another more constantly and
surely than do the waves of thought and feeling,
interest and emotion, in the affairs of life; and
ten days were hardly gone since the arrest and
imprisonment of Samuel Dale, for his confinement among
lunatics amounted to nothing less than imprisonment, when
the neighborhood was thrown into a new state of excitement
by the report that a travelling show was giving exhibitions
in the neighboring city, Cincinnati, and would, within
a fortnight, at farthest, make a halt at Bloomington.

“Heard the news, Mrs. Fairfax?” inquired the butcher,
leaning over the door-yard fence one morning, and suffering
the heifer he was leading by the horn to nibble the short
bunch grass by the wayside.

“News? No. Anybody sick or dead?” she replied
dropping her pruning-knife and hurrying toward him. And
here it may as well be stated that the expulsive power of
her new affection (?) for Dr. Allprice had pretty nearly
driven every other interest from her mind; her inquiry,
therefore, was perfectly in the order of her thoughts.

Then Mr. Stake, the butcher, told all about the great
show that was coming.

“Busy times for me, Mrs. Fairfax, busy times enough!
Why mem it'll take a dozen critters a day to feed the beasts
agreeable to what I hear tell, to say nothing of the gentlemen
showmen, musicians and all, and they do say some of
the birds eats meat!”

“Is it possible! I never heard of such a thing!” cries
Mrs. Fairfax; “and I don't believe the doctor ever did — I'll

ask him — of course he knows about birds and things, in the
way of his profession.”

“Dr. Allprice, you mean? Well, I can't say that I believe
in him over and above, sense that affair here t'other night.
Why, if it hadn't a been for Peter Whiteflock your girl
might 'a' died, I reckon. When big words comes in there's
apt for to be a split, and common sense generally goes t'other
way! That's my notion, but maybe 'tain't your'n.”

“As for big words,” replied Mrs. Fairfax, stiffly, I might
as well blame you for using your butcher-knife — they belong
to the profession. And as for my daughter, it was the
doctor's medicine, and not the effect of anything that Peter
did, which brought her out of her fainting fit, I can tell
you!”

Mr. Stake coughed to hide his confusion; but, not feeling
satisfied with his success, took up the tail of the heifer and
with it brushed away some dust from the knees of his trowsers,
and then he coughed again, almost choking this time,
and then he said he didn't know but he'd have to get some
doctor-stuff himself; and so with a laugh and another switch
of the brush, he brought himself round — not that he was in
the least convinced of an error of judgment, but simply
because he found it hard to breast the current that set so
strongly against him.

“You was a-speakin' about sickness,” he remarked, when
he again found voice, quite falling in with the tenor of Mrs.
Fairfax's thought — “did you happen to know that Peter
Whiteflock had a bad turn, day afore yesterday, it strikes
me it was.”

“Why no! Serious, was it, so as to require medicine?”

“Well, yes, they did send for Dr. Dosum, but they couldn't
get him; he has such an awful big practice, you know, and
then they sent for Allprice, bein' as they couldn't get t'other;
and so I s'pose he'll have the case; doctors generally hold
on, you know. I only hope he'll know how to treat him —
that's all.”

And then he remarks that Peter is a man, that he is peculiar;
“he ain't even sick like nobody else,” he says. And
then he explains that he seemed to have fallen into a fit of
some kind; that he was found lying on the ground stiff as a
bull's tail. “And don't you think,” says he, “that that old
mare o' his'n, Posey, had poked her nose into his shirt-bosom,

and was a-licking away for dear life!” Adding with almost
fatal thoughtlessness: “Some thinks that was what brung
him to.”

“A likely story, to be sure!” says Mrs. Fairfax.

“Yes, just as you say, a likely story!” chimes in the
butcher; “and after all the doctor-stuff he took, too!”

“People are so absurd,” says Mrs. Fairfax.

“So absurd people is, you are quite right there; but the
warm tongue o' the brute might, possibly, you know.”

“Nonsense! the idea!”

“Yes, 'tis a strange idea; some entertains it though.”

“Of course, we know better.”

“Of course.”

Then Mr. Stake said he noticed the doctor's horse at Mr.
Whiteflock's gate that morning as he was going out to look
for creatures in his line o' business.

“At Mr. Whiteflock's did you say?” inquired Mrs.
Fairfax.

“Yes,” replied the butcher, not having noticed the emphasis
placed on the Mr. “Yes, as I was out to look for creatures,”
and then he said, sympathetically, “a doctor must
have a hard life of it, being broke of his rest and all;” that
it was hardly daylight when he sot out to look for the creatures,
and that the doctor had already been dragged out of
bed.

“Are you sure it was his horse?” says Mrs. Fairfax, “and
not Dr. Dosum's?”

And then she asks, perhaps to draw out something further
in reference to the doctor, for what cause he himself had
happened to be stirring so early.

“On account of the creatures,” says the butcher. “You
see I don't know where I may light o' one; and it'll take a
powerful sight to feed the show-beasts, Bengal tiger and all,
to say nothing of the birds, which with 'em the eating of
meat is doubtful you think.”

He used the word creature no doubt, in deference to Mrs.
Fairfax, and as being more euphonious than cattle.

Mrs. Fairfax had heard that bats would eat mice; but
then bats was no sign, she said; they wasn't one thing nor
t'other, with their great leather wings! She had heard the
doctor say there were no bats in the part of the country he
came from and she didn't think there ought to be, anywhere.

The butcher quite agreed with her; “they are nasty
things,” he said, “a-comin' a-dashin' into the house o' nights
like their heads was off, and scarin' a-body!” he was glad
to know there was anywheres where there was no bats!

This was meant to be a delicate compliment to the doctor,
and was so received. Mrs. Fairfax felt so kindly toward
him that she immediately inquired after his family.

“The children was all able to eat their portion,” he said,
“especially if there happened to be a choice part of a choice
creature on the table; but his lady was complaining some.”

“She needs medicine I dare say,” was the comment of
Mrs. Fairfax. And Mr. Stake said he would tell his lady
which it was the opinion of Mrs. Fairfax that she needed
medicine, and he hoped she might be induced to see Dr.
Allprice.

“I do hope so! the dear little woman!” cries Mrs. Fairfax.
And then she says the doctor's medicine has the most
magical effect upon — some! She hesitated before pronouncing
the last word of the sentence, and it is probable
that she had intended to conclude with a personal pronoun;
but somehow the broad daylight, and the creature standing
by the fence-side, operated as a check, and caused her to give
her remark a more general application.

“Maybe,” says the butcher, casting up a sheep's eye;
“maybe his medicines is particular adapted to your case!
not that I mean to say he ain't a good doctor.”

“O, Mr. Stake, you naughty man!” cries Mrs. Fairfax,
blushing and giving the strings of her cap a little flirt.
“What put such nonsense into your head, to be sure!” And
then she says the doctor and she are good friends, the best
of friends, indeed; but that there is nothing but friendship
between them.

“I have seen things which they was nothing but friendship
in the beginning that they turned out fur otherways!”
says the butcher, laughing, and switching the tail of the cow
which he still held in his hand, this way and that, with great
energy, in order to adjust himself to his own audacity.

“Did you ever! Why you get worse and worse, Mr.
Stake,” cries the widow, radiant with delight. And then
she says she has a great mind to patronize the butcher at
the other end of the town, and so retaliate upon Mr. Stake.

By this time the relation between them had become so

amicable that the butcher ventured to let go the cow's tail
and rest himself for support entirely upon the fence.

“You patronize the butcher at the other end of the town,
indeed!” says he, laughing as though it were a fine joke —
“a dealer in old sheep, corned beef and liver! Ah, I'll
trust you for that — there is some that don't know what's
what, and there is some that does, and you're one of 'em.”
And then he said his class of customers was the class which
it was the same that Dr. Allprice belonged to — “none o'
your common sort, no mam!”

They talked of the weather, the crops, the prices, Mrs.
Fairfax through all making constant allusion in one way or
another to Dr. Allprice. For instance, when Mr. Stake remarked
that it looked like for rain, she replied that it was
fortunate the doctor had a top buggy! and when he remarked
that vegetables was high that season, she answered that the
doctor did not eat vegetables — he didn't think they was
healthy. The fact being that no subject could have been
introduced, no matter how far away at first, that would not
have led directly back to the doctor.

They gossipped a little about the neighbors. Mrs. Rhinelander
had got a new high-post bedstead that was reported
to have cost fifteen dollars; though Mr. Stake gave it as his
opinion that it had not cost so much; “folks always make out
a big story,” said he. Then he said that his lady had seen it,
and she didn't think it was so very much better than their'n,
that cost only nine dollars. Miss P. Goke, the milliner, was
going to raise her half story up, so folks said, and going to
take boarders; and who did Mrs. Fairfax s'pose she was
going to take? Why, M. Hoops, the cooper, for one!
Whether she was going to take him for good and all nobody
knew, and he s'posed it was nobody's business, and he was
sure he didn't care what Miss P. Goke did, but as a general
rule, he thought it best for a body to stick to one trade, and
it did seem as if bonnets and boarders didn't go good together.

John Huff, the tanner, that he lost his wife only last
November — the tenth, he thought it was — had stripped
the crape off his hat, and stuck a little straw concern sideways
on to his head, just to make him look young. “Don't
you think, Miss Fairfax,” said Mr. Stake, “that Huff came
to my place t'other day to see if I had anything in his line,

— from my creatures, you know — our business brings us
together now and then, and instead of comin' through the
gate like a white man, he puts his hand on to the top bar
and bounces over the fence like a young spark. I give him
to understand that I didn't approve of such capers.”

Mrs. Fairfax did not know Mr. Huff at all, but she did
know that when a man of his class lost one wife, he was
pretty likely to act the fool till he got another. And then
Mr. Stake hastened to explain that he was no ways intimate
with John Huff — “his business is not up to mine,” he said,
“but the creatures, you see, occupy a kind of middle ground
that we meet on to it sometimes.”

And then he said, Huff wasn't the only man in Bloomington,
that he was a comin' out a butterfly; Sole, the shoemaker,
had thrown that little back room into his front shop,
and stuck up a red screen catacornered like, so that the
ladies could try on their shoes without being exposed — he
reckoned that was the idee, anyhow.

“City notions is a creepin' onto us mighty fast,” says Mr.
Stake, and then he says that Cincinnatah is about the finest
town in the whole world, he reckons, but for all that he
doesn't know as he wants to live there; Bloomington is
quite fine enough for him. And then he asks Mrs. Fairfax
if she knows that the Whiteflocks have sot up a carriage?

“A carriage! Lord bless my soul, no! What sort of a
carriage? Anything like the doctor's?”

“Well, no, it ain't like the doctor's — it's bigger and there's
more heft to it accordin' to its size; it's lined with blue, and
the curtains of it is regular silk, but I hain't had the honor
to be no nearer to it than I am now. I hear the talk, that's
all, and they say it cost a mint o' money.”

“I wonder if the old mare, Posey, is to be driven to it?”
says Mrs. Fairfax with a little sneer, and then she laughs
and sneers outright, and says she wonders if Peter will be
taken out much for his health! And then she wonders Sister
Whiteflock doesn't enlarge her house, withal; “big as it is,
it isn't big enough,” she says; “she has to use the cellar, you
know!”

“Well, now, I reckon that's Peter's fault, purty much, if
not altogether,” says Mr. Stake.

“Peter's fiddlestick!” was all the answer Mrs. Fairfax
made to this suggestion. It was too supremely ridiculous.

“You women — ladies, I mean,” says the butcher, “is
always hard onto one another,” and then he says Mrs. Whiteflock
is able to have a carriage, and it doesn't cost anybody
a red cent, except herself; he wishes her well, for his part.

“Dear me, and so do I, I hope,” and then Mrs. Fairfax
says, that nobody can esteem Sister Whiteflock higher than
she — that she considers her, in fact, as one of the excellent
of the earth, and wouldn't for the world say a word to her
disparagement; but after all, she does think some of Sister
Whiteflock's ways are a little queer!

“Them high bows on her bonnet, for a woman of her
years, and the mother of she don't know how many children!
Why, she can hardly get into the meetin'-house sometimes,
with all her furbelows.”

And then Mrs. Fairfax says, almost under breath, “Between
you and me, Mr. Stake, if Sister Whiteflock wasn't
Sister Whiteflock, she'd a' been disciplined in the class-meeting
long enough before this time, for her overmuch
finery, and — well, I won't say!”

“Now you ladies is too bad!” says the butcher, again.

“Maybe so,” answers Mrs. Fairfax, and then she asks him
with a little tap of her fore-finger upon his hand, if he has
had the pleasure to see Luther Larky lately; adding with
the bitterest sarcasm that she thinks young Luther Larky a
hopeful case! and then she laughs and tosses her cap ribbons
over her shoulders and says this is a funny world.

“It's a world that it's uncharitable,” says Mr. Stake, and
then he went on to say that he himself had thought strange
of some of Mrs. Whiteflock's ways sometimes in the days
that they was gone, but that her noble and magnanimous
conduct upon a certainn occasion which he had had occasion
to have with her, that it called her up out of her — he would
say that it called her from her retirement at the solemn
midnight hour, had convinced him that some of the things
he had thought, was things that they wasn't true. “She
treated us with perfect luxuriance,” remarked Mr. Stake,
“upon the occasion that we had occasion to have it, and I
take that as a test of good temper, anyhow, because that it's
aggravating to most ladies to be called from their retirement
onseasonable. Why, even a creature will hook a feller,”
says he, “that has rousted up onseasonable.”

Mrs. Fairfax soon fixed the occasion, and this done she

drew forth all the particulars, by a little leading and management,
and when she knew about the brandy and the rest of
it, she shook her head ominously, as much as to say she put
her own interpretation upon Mrs. Whiteflock's conduct upon
the occasion, and an interpretation differing materially from
that of the butcher.

“You men are so easy took in,” she says, and then she
asks innocently if Sister Whiteflock buys her butcher's
meat of Mr. Stake. She inquires, she says, because she has
seen her, or Luther Larky, which is the same thing, buying
occasionally of that upstart at the other end of the town.
It did not occur to her that this insinuation betrayed herself,
but it did occur to the butcher, and besides, he had too
vivid a recollection of the peach brandy to permit any new
prejudice from taking root in his mind. He thought he
must be getting along with his creature, he said, shading his
eyes with his hand and looking at the sun, and then he asked
Mrs. Fairfax to call and see his lady, and he added they
would try and give her something to keep her from starvin',
if she stayed with 'em half a day.”

Mrs. Fairfax thanked him, and said she didn't visit much,
her church duties and one thing and another occupied most
of her time, but she would make it a point to see Mrs. Stake,
if possible.

“Well, now, you must try and come!” says the butcher;
my lady'll be quite made up to have a visit from you.”

“You are very good to say so, and I shall certainly make
it a point.”

“You must make it a pint and make it soon too.”

“Thank you, I will try to make it soon, Mr. Stake.”

“Well, if you only try you can.”

“I shall do my best, certainly.”

“Now, you'll be sure.”

“Quite sure, I think.”

“Well, then, I'll tell my lady, and she'll expect you. Don't
forget it!”

“I will not forget, and Mrs. Stake shall not be disappointed.”

“What day shall I tell my lady to look for you?”

Mrs Fairfax does not know that she is prepared just then
to name a day.

“O, but you must,” says the butcher. “Ladies likes to
know when ladies is goin' to call on 'em.”

“Then we will say Wednesday; the doctor says he always
has good luck on that day; besides its market day, and I
can kill two birds with one stone, you see.”

“Ha, ha! Very good! Then you'll come and no fail,
Miss Fairfax?”

“No failure, unless something unforseen should happen,
which is not likely.”

“Which it is not likely; but you musn't forget, will you
now, Miss Fairfax?”

“O, no, Mr. Stake, the doctor says he never forgets an
invitation, and I don't neither.”

“Then my lady may depend on seeing you?”

“Yes, to be sure.”

“I'll tell her so, then.”

“Of course.”

“Come early, Mrs. Fairfax.”

“Yes.”

“And stay and take a bite with us — we'll try to give you
something you can swaller.”

Mrs. Fairfax, who had been retreating backward slowly
and suggestively for the last five minutes, replied to this
hospitable appeal by a smile and a nod, forbearing even a
monosyllable, lest the kind-hearted butcher might feel himself
forcibly detained thereby.

Fortunately for him he was out doors, for if the interview
had taken place in the parlor, the difficulty of the leave-taking
would have been greatly enhanced. The necessity
of rising, the carpet beneath his feet, the door-handle, everything
would have complicated matters. As it was, the
creature munching grass, the earth beneath his feet, the goad
in his hand, were so many helps to him, through whose instrumentality
he did ultimately begin to go.

“Well, good-by, Miss Fairfax,” he said, and then he said,
“Well, now we'll expect you.” And then he said, “Well,
good-by,” again. And so, what with some coughing and
much laughing, and a good deal of scolding of the cow in a
rough, angry voice — quite make believe — he did finally
triumph over himself and so departed out of reach and
hearing.

“Well, mother, what did Mr. Stake have to say?” inquired
Margaret, when Mrs. Fairfax returned to the house.
She had been sitting at the window, pale and anxious, wrapt

in a thick wool shawl, though the air was so warm, watching
the conversation with intense interest. Of course they were
talking of Samuel! What else could they be talking of in
such earnest! Perhaps Mr. Lightwait had already seen him,
and brought a favorable report — maybe, even a message or
a letter! Her heart was beating high with hope when she
asked the question, and the hateful little chills that had been
running up and down under her gray shawl all the morning,
were, for the moment, quite forgotten.

“O, I don't know hardly what we talked about,” replied
the mother; “a good many things.”

She seemed preoccupied and irritable, and Margaret
gathered the shawl closer about her bosom, the chills began
to creep again. “Really, I thought you would have something
to tell, after all this time,” she replied, picking at the
fringes of the shawl, and looking down.

“La me! I don't remember everything he said; nothing
of any account; he's a great bore, and I was tired to death
before he went away, and now I suppose I've got to go and
see his wife.”

“Why, is she sick?” asked Margaret.

“Why? why because he's asked me, and I've said I'd go,
and if I don't he'll be mad and charge two prices for his
beefsteaks, that's why; but much you know about management.”

And Mrs. Fairfax tied up her shoe strings with angry
energy, and tossing her hair down over her shoulders, began
brushing it with a will.

“Are you going anywhere, mother?” said Margaret,
directly, and still hoping to draw something forth about
Samuel.

“I don't know, I thought maybe I would, but why do you
talk so much, child? I thought you was sick.”

“O, mother!” said Margaret: “if you only knew” — and
here she broke down, and hid her eyes in her arms, and
shook with suppressed emotion.

By degrees, and when she was no further questioned, Mrs.
Fairfax relented, and told the news. All about Miss P.
Goke and the cooper; all about Mr. Huff, and his boyish hat
and boyish capers; all about Mr. Sole, the shoemaker, and
the new red screen; and last, not least, all about Mrs. Whiteflock's
fine carriage, with its blue lining and silken curtains.

“Lord bless us, won't she be set up!” was her closing
exclamation; “I reckon a body can't touch her with a ten-foot
pole, after this!”

And Margaret wiped her eyes and drew near the fire, but
shawl and fire would not, both together, make her warm, and
the fringes and folds trembled over her bosom, do what she
would to keep them still.

“It's the nasty ague!” said Mrs. Fairfax, as she stood
with her back to Margaret, pinning her shawl and tying on
her bonnet.

It was not the nasty ague, and she knew that very well
when she said it; it was the chill that comes of weakness,
of pining and of fear. The name of Samuel was not mentioned
from day's end to day's end, the mother completely
ignoring the relation which in her heart she knew existed
between him and her daughter, since the affair of the apparition.

Her own mind was completely taken up with new plans
and purposes, and she had no patience with Margaret's fretting
and tears. She was spoiling her beauty, and her chance
with the bishop's son! Why couldn't she give the poor,
homely fellow up, once for all? He wasn't the only man in
the world, to be sure!

She addressed Margaret as little Mrs. Bishop, now and
then, and talked playfully of what she would do when she
was mistress of the parsonage. Mrs. Whiteflock wouldn't
be at the head of the heap any longer, she guessed, when
the silk skirts of a certain damsel she knew come to be as
long and as broad as her own. Sometimes she would speak
of the night of the murder, always referring to the time as
though a murder had actually been done, and sometimes
she would say she could not be thankful enough that everything
had turned out as it had — just to think what might
have been! Thus intimating that what might have been was
over and done with now, forever and forever.

She did not give Margaret the semblance of sympathy —
she would not admit that sympathy was required — it was
all the nasty ague-fits, brought on by the excitement about
the murder. She wished old Sam Dale had stayed where he
came from; the poor, good-for-nothing scamp! But, dear
sakes! he wasn't worth talking about.

As Margaret drooped, and could not eat nor sleep, she

manifested toward her only the greater hardness and anger.
She might rally if she was only a mind; at any rate, she
might see the doctor and have some medicine, and that would
be all in all. She was perverse, self-willed, and, for her part,
she thought she deserved to suffer.

In short, she took the very course best calculated to intensify
the girl's love for Samuel, and to set her against the
bishop's son. Margaret, therefore, was not really in the confidence
of any one; a sort of half-confidence existed between
her and her pastor, to be sure, just enough to make her less
satisfied and at ease with herself than as though no confidence
existed at all. The amount of it was simply this: she
had seen and felt that he understood the truth of her position
pretty clearly, and she had not denied his conclusions;
a tacit understanding and a tacit silence had somehow come
to be the relation in which they stood to each other, and
still she fluctuated between open confession and down-right
denial. He had not sought her confidence, but, on the contrary,
rather repelled it, assuming now one shape and now
another, as it were, toward her, and since the interview of
the garden, so strange and bewildering, she had had no communication
with him. Every morning, she had looked for
the fulfilment of his promise, and every evening she had
despaired. Day by day her step had grown fainter, and her
cheek more thin and pale. The general feeling of the neighborhood
as she gathered from the spirit that always fills the
air in reference to all questionable matters, was, that Samuel
had met as good a fate as he deserved, and that the bishop's
son was a dreadfully outraged and injured saint. What
business had the like of Samuel to lift his hand against the
shadow of their bishop's son, even though he were twice crazy.
The truth being, perhaps, that nobody really believed him to
be crazy. He had probably, under the influence of whiskey,
become frightened at one of his own sheared sheep, and so
taken to acting the fool generally. He was no credit to
society any how, big and clumsy, and poor as a church mouse;
the latter being no doubt, the most fatal objection.

Mrs. Whiteflock by her intercession in his favor had considerably
lost caste, except it were with a small party of uninfluential
people. Her oldest and most intimate friend and
admirer, Mrs. Fairfax, had quite turned against her amongst
the rest, the coolness being the more pronounced in consequence

of the new carriage, and last, not least, for the
reason that Dr. Dosum had been called to Peter in preference
to Dr. Allprice. The latter to be sure secured the case in
the end, and that was some comfort, but it by no means
obliterated the memory of the first slight. If the truth
must be told, she had prepared herself to visit Sister Whiteflock
that morning, partly from curious, partly from selfish
motives.

She had just finished the knot under her chin and settled
the twitching lines about her mouth to a kind of sweetly sad
serenity, when the scuffling of footsteps along the walk
caused her to turn suddenly from the glass. “What now, I
wonder!” she cried. “Nobody never can do anything they
want to. I suppose when I get ready to die something will
hinder me!” And then all at once putting honey in her
tone, added, “My dear boy! do you know how glad I am to
see you?”

“Shouldn't wonder!” replied the new comer, who was no
other than Luther Whiteflock. He had a roll of printed
bills under his arm, a brush stuck in his waistband, and a pot
of paste in his hand.

“Did you come to tell me about your father? and what
does the doctor think of him?” asked Mrs. Fairfax, without
waiting for her first question to be answered.

“Th' ole man, do ye mean?” says Luther, cocking up one
eye — “no-sir-ee! I come onto business o' my own! I've
gone into government service, don't ye see!” And he
swung the paste pot quite against the knees of Mrs. Fairfax.

“My, to be sure,” she says, “Important business, is it?”

“You bet! I'm under orders, don't I look like I was?”
And he makes another dash of the pot, and then he says,
“We're a-going to have the tarnalest big show into Bloomington
that ever was showed, and thems the bills of it with
picters of the first-class snakes, and royal Bengal beasts, like
to look at 'em, Mag?”

Margaret shook her head, but the mother took the offered
bill from the boy's hand and examined it with much interest
and curiosity, forcing her daughter to see the prints of the
elephant, tiger and first-class snake, much against her will,
commenting, the while, with hearty satisfaction on the moral
and religious characteristics of the show as there set forth.
“How nice!” she exclaimed, as her eye ran over the advertisement.

“God's people have been long enough shut out
from royal elephants and first-class snakes and things!”
And then she wondered whether the doctor knew about the
show, and whether, if he did, his attention had been called
to its elevated and beautiful tone. “Just listen,” she said,
“this portion might be taken from a Sunday-school tract, for
all one would know;” and she read aloud, “Nothing will
be permitted during the entire performance that can cause a
blush to mantle the virgin cheek of the most virgin modesty;
nothing that the pious fathers and mothers of families may
not take their numerous offspring to witness with pleasure
and profit alike intense and peculiar; nothing that youth
upon the dawn of bearded manhood may not behold with
benefit to the entire moral and physical nature; nothing that
will not alike amuse and instruct the infant at the breast,
and the gray-haired sire tottering from this mortal scene.”

“Beautifully worded!” cries Mrs. Fairfax, and she reads
on, “The marvelous and soul-astounding performance of the
carnivorous monkey, Buckeye, supposed by some naturalists
to be a man, defies all powers of human description, must be
seen to be appreciated, and is alone worth the entire charge
of admission. This remarkable creature, bearing upon him
the marks of an antediluvian existence, was kept, for his
diversion, by Napoleon Bonaparte during his residence on
the remote and rocky isle of St. Helena, and has since been
in the possession both of kings and high dignitaries of the
church. He subsists almost exclusively upon milk, rides two
ponies running diverse ways at once, bearing the American
flag in his left hand and the eagle in his right. His countenance
is habitually expressive of discontent, though he has
been known at rare intervals to smile. These exquisitely high-toned
and intructive performances have three repetitions a
day — morning, afternoon and evening, during each of which
the grand brass band discourses sweet music to the tune of
Old Hundred or Yankee Doodle. Admission twenty-five
cents, children half price. Come one, come all.” “Dear me!
did you ever!” says Mrs. Fairfax; “you must let me have one
of these, my little man — I want to show it to a person, if I
happen to see a person that I have in my mind. But to
change the subject” — and then she asks Luther at what
time of day Dr. Allprice makes his professional visit at their
house.

Luther tosses a couple of the bills into her lap with the
air of a prince giving alms to a beggar, and then he says,
“Things at our house are lovely, and the goose hangs high!”

“How so?” says Mrs. Fairfax.

“Mother's turned Mr. Larky adrift,” says Luther, “and
took th' ole man under her wing, but 'f I'd a-been goink to
turn off ary one, 'twould a-been the t'other, you bet!”

“Why Luther!” says Mrs. Fairfax, “what a boy you are!”
and then she says, “she thinks she knows a person that
wouldn't allow his boy to talk that way, if he was married
and had a boy!”

“Whew!” whistled Luther, “I'd like to see the feller that
wouldn't allow me!”

“But, my dear,” says Mrs. Fairfax, putting honey in her
tone again, “you didn't tell me what time the doctor makes
his visits.”

“As often as he darst, then, twice't a day — morning and
evening — he's after the chink — that's what he's after!”

Mrs. Fairfax colors, and inquires about the new carriage.

“It's a sort of a one-hoss concern,” says Luther, “I don't
think much of it” — and then he says he han't rid in it and
don't expect to — he's been took up with his own affairs.

“Give my best love to your mother,” says Mrs. Fairfax,
“and tell her I'll try and drop in this evening.” And she
deliberately unpins her shawl.

“Well,” answered Luther, “when I get this ere paste used
up, I'll stop and carry your love into my bucket; reckon
there's a heap of it; but I ain't a-goink for to stop my business
on account o' no woman's folly, I can tell ye. I ain't
green enough for that!”

Margaret turned indignantly upon him. “You ought to
be ashamed of yourself!” she said.

“Was that you?” answered the lad, with all impudence,
“or was it a cabbage-head busted?” And then he says with
diabolical hatefulness: “Have you heard the good news
about Sam, Mag? They say he's stark mad, and got his
head shaved! That's the word Lightwait brung out o' town,
any how!”

“O, mother!” moans Margaret, piteously.

“O, mother! What can mother do, I'd like to know?”
And Mrs. Fairfax folds the show-bill that she wishes “a person”
to see, and slips it in her bosom.

“Nothing! Nothing!” Margaret moans again. And the
chill takes hold of her with greater force, for she resists no
longer, and keeps hold until she is shaken from head to foot.

At last, when she can steady her voice enough to speak,
she says: “Did the butcher say anything about it, this morning,
mother?”

“About what, child?”

“Why, about Samuel, mother, and about Mr. Lightwait's
having been to see him.”

And then Mrs. Fairfax says that Mr. Stake didn't say a word
about Sam Dale; that, for her part, she didn't ask and didn't
want to hear about him; and as for the bishop's son having
been to see him, she thinks it's a very unlikely story. And,
turning her back to Margaret — it makes her nervous to see
her shaking so, she says — she betakes herself to crotcheting
and the singing of hymns. And here it may be remarked that
the slippers being thus elaborately wrought had been actually
commenced for Samuel, afterward transferred to Mr. Lightwait,
in her imagination, and made over finally to Doctor
Prosper Allprice.

With her trivial nature, it was no great wonder that she
had no more patience with Margaret. As the evening drew
on, she made two or three ascents to the attic, whether because
the small window overlooked Mrs. Whiteflock's gate and
hitching-post we will not venture to determine; but certain
it is that Doctor Allprice's horse had not been at the post
more than five minutes, when she set out on her neighborly
visit.

She was so flushed on arriving at the gate, in consequence
of her fast walking, that it occurred to her to take a turn
round by the barn, and so have a peep at the new carriage,
and diminish the hue of her cheeks to a more becoming tint;
thus, as she had said to the butcher, “killing two birds with
one stone. The fastening of the barn-door proved too high
for her arm to reach, conveniently, however. She soon found
an opening between the gray weather-boards, of sufficient
width to give her a pretty good view, but she had no sooner
peered in, than she drew back, the blood in her cheek tingling
hotter than before, with wonder and curiosity. Her
eyebrows went up of their own accord, and her mouth fell
a-gape of its own accord: then she peered again, more cautiously,
this time, and then a knot tied itself in her forehead,

and she applied her ear to the crack, and after a minute her
hands clutched each other, and her head nodded, as much as
to say, “I've got it!” and then, all a-tiptoe, and looking
stealthily about her, she went away; but whether the curtains
of the carriage were blue or red, she couldn't for the
life of her, have told. She lingered in the garden a little
while, and as Byron says, calmed herself and fixed her brow
into a kind of quiet, and then, with a bunch of flowers in
her hand, one of which she already saw, in her mind's eye,
in the doctor's button-hole, she sauntered into the house.