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"I could n't help comin'," said Nurse Byloe, "we do so love our babies, how can we help it, Miss Badlam?" The spinster colored up at the nurse's odd way of using the possessive pronoun, and dropped her eyes, as was natural on hearing such a speech. "I never tended children as you have, Nuss," she said.
Ina Klosking looked at her, and observed her age and her dress, the latter old-fashioned. She said, quietly, "Will mademoiselle do me the honor to stand before me? I will sing her a trifle my mother taught me." The spinster complied, and stood erect and stiff, with her arms folded.
The last he heard, as the white horse slowly pulled out of sight through the forest, was Aunt Eliza's, "Go slow, Mary Jane, for mercy's sake! Don't let her run away!" while the prim spinster shouted back in a high key, "Good-by, young man! You're a great credit to your sex;" and Mary Jane, pounding the poor mare vigorously, yelled, "G'lang! Get up! We'll never get home!"
But another terrible suspicion had entered the old lady's mind; the ring might not be genuine. "I must know at once," exclaimed the disturbed spinster. "I'll go over to Brandon, to the jeweller's, and inquire. If it's paste, then, Deborah Kensington, you're the biggest fool in Centreville."
Then he resumed, turning his bald head more towards the fire. "This appeared to me remarkable. I could not by any means understand it. It seemed to me first of all peculiar that one maiden lady should address another maiden lady as 'Bill'. My experience, as I have said, may be incomplete; maiden ladies may have among themselves and in exclusively spinster circles wilder customs than I am aware of.
'Vy, sir, said Sam, grinning still more, 'he wishes to know vether she 'In short, interposed old Mr. Weller decisively, a perspiration breaking out upon his forehead, 'vether that 'ere old creetur is or is not a widder. Mr. Pickwick laughed heartily, and so did I, as I replied decisively, that 'my housekeeper was a spinster. 'There! cried Sam, 'now you're satisfied.
Tracy Tupman gently pressed her hand to his lips, and sank upon the sofa. 'Are you faint? inquired the anxious Rachael. 'No, said Mr. Tupman. 'It is nothing. I shall be better presently. He closed his eyes. 'He sleeps, murmured the spinster aunt. Tupman! Mr. Tupman jumped up 'Oh, say those words again! he exclaimed. The lady started. 'Surely you did not hear them! she said bashfully.
There was more of this sort in the letter. It was full of a kind of sorrowful yearning, as if there was fear that Margaret's love were slipping away and all the old relations were being broken up, but yet it had in it a certain moral condemnation that the New England spinster could not conceal.
The superintendent of schools was not inspiring as a model; the judge, for all his talk, lived a life of fat idleness, with convenient maladies when the Penniman lawn needed mowing. Mrs. Penniman, it is true, fought the battle of life steadily with her plain and fancy dressmaking, but with no visible glory; and Winona herself was becoming a drab, sedate spinster, troubled about many things.
'Don't be frightened, said the host. 'What's the matter? screamed the ladies. 'Mr. Tupman has met with a little accident; that's all. The spinster aunt uttered a piercing scream, burst into an hysteric laugh, and fell backwards in the arms of her nieces. 'Throw some cold water over her, said the old gentleman. 'No, no, murmured the spinster aunt; 'I am better now. Bella, Emily a surgeon!
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