They All Do It; or, Mr. Miggs of Danbury and his Neighbors Being a Faithful Record of What Befell the Miggses on Several
Important Occasions ... | ||
A GRIEVOUS MISTAKE.
A FEW days ago, a young man who had been sick but a week died. His widow sent word of the mournful event to her brother, who was at work harvesting for a farmer near Croton Falls, N.Y. When he got the intelligence, he made haste to Danbury, some thirty miles; but, owing to delay of several kinds, did not reach here until the friends got back from the burial. The suddenness of the death, and the fact that the man whom he had seen in health but three weeks before was dead and buried, was a severe shock to him. He spoke about it several times in a dazed sort of a way, and would break off, in inquiring the particulars of the last sickness, to comment upon the dreadful suddenness of the affair.
"And now he is buried," he added at the close of the bereaved women's recital, "and we shall never see him again. It don't seem possible that George is gone. Don't cry, Maria. It's hard on you; but it can't be helped. You did every thing
"We buried him in that suit of clothes," said she, interrupting, "and"—
"What!"
They were both on their feet now. He stood there with his hands separated and clinched, a ghastly pallor on his face, and his eyes fairly starting from their sockets. Brought to her feet by the strength and suddenness of his exclamation, she stood before him in pallid wonder, with the quiver of a nameless fear on her lips.
"Do you mean ter say," he gasped, "that you chucked a new suit of clothes under ground like that?"
"Tom!" she cried, holding up both hands in a horror of protest.
"Don't Tom me!" he screamed with a bitterness
And, with a groan of despair, he sank heavily into a seat.
"Tom!" gasped the unhappy woman in a voice of horror, "are you crazy?"
"Crazy!" he shrilly repeated. "If I ain't crazy, is it your fault, you miserable sister! Crazy! It's enough to make the hosts of heaven crazy to see forty dollars' worth of clothes chucked to ten cents' worth of worms."
She buried her white face in her hands, and sobbed outright for shame and agony.
"There's no use crying over spilt milk," he gloomily observed. "You've done it, and that's an end of it, and can now have the consolation of knowin' that you've injured an own brother. Another time I guess you'll be a little more careful how you fire a new suit of clothes into the ground."
And, with this prophecy, he morosely strode out of the house.
They All Do It; or, Mr. Miggs of Danbury and his Neighbors Being a Faithful Record of What Befell the Miggses on Several
Important Occasions ... | ||