Bankrupt ( part 5)

But, alas! Deacon Tolman had been dead this many a year!

A little later, the parson sat up in bed, shuffling his manuscript about with

nervous hands, and Dorcas, in the kitchen, stood washing her breakfast

dishes. That eager interest in living still possessed her. She began

humming, in a timid monotone. Her voice had the clearness of truth, with

little sweetness; and she was too conscious of its inadequacy to use it in

public, save under the compelling force of conscience. Hitherto, she had

only sung in Sunday-school, moved, as in everything, by the pathetic

desire of "doing her part;" but this morning seemed to her one for lifting

the voice, though not in Sunday phrasing. After a little thought, she

began thinly and sweetly,--

"Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,

I heard a maid sing in the valley below:

'O don't deceive me! O never leave me

How could you use a poor maiden so?'"

A gruff voice from the, doorway broke harshly in upon a measure.

"Yes! yes! Well! well! Tunin' up a larrady, ain't ye?"

Dorcas knew who it was, without turning round,--a dark, squat woman,

broad all over; broad in the hips, the waist, the face, and stamped with

the race-mark of high cheekbones. Her thick, straight black hair was cut

"tin-basin style;" she wore men's boots, and her petticoats were nearly up

to her knees.

"Good morning, Nancy!" called Dorcas, blithely, wringing out her

dishcloth. "Come right in, and sit down."

Nance Pete (in other words, Nancy the wife of Pete, whose surname was

unknown) clumped into the room, and took a chair by the hearth. She

drew forth a short black pipe, looked into it discontentedly, and then sat

putting her thumb in and out of the bowl."You 'ain't got a mite o' terbacker about ye? Hey what?" she asked.

Dorcas had many a time been shocked at the same demand. This

morning, something humorous about it struck her, and she laughed.

"You know I haven't, Nancy Pete! Did you mend that hole in your skirt, as

I told you?"

Nance laboriously drew a back breadth of her coarse plaid skirt round to

the front, and displayed it, without a word. A three-cornered tear of the

kind known as a barn-door had been treated by tying a white string well

outside it, and gathering up the cloth, like a bag. Dorcas's sense of fitness

forbade her to see anything humorous in so original a device. She stood

before the woman in all the moral excellence of a censor fastidiously clad.

"O Nancy Pete!" she exclaimed. "How could you?"

Nance put her cold pipe in her mouth, and began sucking at the

unresponsive stem.

"You 'ain't got a bite of anything t' eat, have ye?" she asked, indifferently.

Dorcas went to the pantry, and brought forth pie, doughnuts and cheese,

and a dish of cold beans. The coffee-pot was waiting on the stove. One

would have said the visitor had been expected. Nance rose and tramped

over to the table. But Dorcas stood firmly in the way.

"No, Nancy, no! You wait a minute! Are you going to meeting to-day?"

"I 'ain't had a meal o' victuals for a week!" remarked Nance, addressing

no one in particular.

"Nancy, are you going to meeting?"

"Whose seat be I goin' to set in?" inquired Nance, rebelliously, yet with a

certain air of capitulation."You can sit in mine. Haven't you sat there for the last five years? Now,

Nancy, don't hinder me!"

"Plague take it, then! I'll go!"

At this expected climax, Dorcas stood aside, and allowed her visitor to

serve herself with beans. When Nance's first hunger had been satisfied,

she began a rambling monologue, of an accustomed sort to which Dorcas

never listened.

"I went down to peek into the Poorhouse winders, this mornin'. There

they all sut, like rats in a trap. 'Got ye, 'ain't they?' says I. Old Sal Flint

she looked up, an' if there'd been a butcher-knife handy, I guess she'd ha'

throwed it. 'It's that Injun!' says she to Mis' Giles. 'Don't you take no

notice!' 'I dunno's I'm an Injun,' says I, 'I dunno how much Injun I be. I

can't look so fur back as that. I dunno's there's any more Injun in me

than there is devil in you!' I says. An' then the overseer he come out, an'

driv' me off. 'You won't git me in there,' says I to him, 'not so long's I've

got my teeth to chaw sassafras, an' my claws to dig me a holler in the

ground!' But when I come along, he passed me on the road, an' old Sal

Flint sut up by him on the seat, like a bump on a log. I guess he was

carryin' her over to that Pope-o'-Rome meetin' they've got over to

Sudleigh."

Dorcas turned about, in anxious interest.

"Oh, I wonder if he was! How _can_ folks give up their own meeting for

that?"

Nance pushed her chair back from the table.

"Want to see all kinds, I s'pose," she said, slyly. "Guess I'll try it myself,

another Sunday!"

"Anybody to home?" came a very high and wheezy voice from the

doorway. Dorcas knew that also, and so did Nance Pete.

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