United States or Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The vindictive old man, who was as tight as dumpling and buttons could make him, refused it in a drooping tone, and went forth, looking at none. Mrs. Sumfit turned to all parties, and begged them to say what more, to please Master Gammon, she could have done? When Anthony was ready to speak of her Dahlia, she obtruded this question in utter dolefulness.
"I do know, Mas' Gammon. And ought to: for don't I pour out to ye? It's five you take, and please, your cup, if you'll hand it over." "Four's my number, marm," Master Gammon reiterated resolutely. He sat like a rock. "If they was dumplins," moaned Mrs. Sumfit, "not four, no, nor five, 'd do till enough you'd had, and here we might stick to our chairs, but you'd go on and on; you know you would."
Perhaps, if Robert worked among them, she would gratefully give him her hand. That is, if he said not a word of love. Master Gammon and Mrs. Sumfit were punctual in their return near the dinnerhour; and the business of releasing the dumplings and potatoes, and spreading out the cold meat and lettuces, restrained for some period the narrative of proceedings at the funeral.
"Four, marm," said her inveterate antagonist, as he finished that amount, and consequently put the spoon in his cup. Mrs. Sumfit rolled in her chair. "O Lord, Mas' Gammon! Five, I say; and never a cup less so long as here you've been." "Four, marm. I don't know," said Master Gammon, with a slow nod of his head, "that ever I took five cups of tea at a stretch. Not runnin'."
Sumfit simpered, "Hem; it's the heart of a woman, too: and she have one, and it's dying to hear of her darlin' blessed in town, and of who cuts her hair, and where she gets her gownds, and whose pills " The farmer interrupted her irritably. "Divide a couple o' hundred thousand and more by forty-five and a half," he said. "Do wait, mother; all in good time.
Sumfit, she called her "Mother Dumpling," as Dahlia did of old, affectionately, and kissed her, and ran on to Master Gammon, who was tramping leisurely on to the oatfield lying on toward the millholms. "My sister sends you her love," she said brightly to the old man.
Sumfit then intertwisted her fingers, and related how that she and Master Gammon had one day, six years distant, talked on a lonely evening over the mischances which befel poor people when they grew infirm, or met with accident, and what "useless clays" they were; and yet they had their feelings.
If you're mixed up with that family, I won't bring it in you're anyways mixed up with this family; not so as to clash, do you see. Only, man, now you are here, a word'd be civil, if you don't want a doctor." "I was right," murmured Mrs. Sumfit. "At the funeral, he was; and Lord be thanked! I thought my eyes was failin'. Mas' Gammon, you'd ha' lost no character by sidin' wi' me."
"She won't be ashamed of me," Rhoda faltered; and then hummed a little tune, and said firmly "It's no use my trying to look like what I'm not." "No, truly;" Mrs. Sumfit assented. "But it's your bein' behind the fashions what hurt me. As well you might be an old thing like me, for any pleasant looks you'll git. Now, the country you're like in a coalhole for the matter o' that.
Rhoda kissed his cheeks and whispered for tidings of Dahlia. "Go up to her," the farmer said. Rhoda grew very chill. She went upstairs with apprehensive feet, and recognizing Mrs. Sumfit outside the door of Dahlia's room, embraced her, and heard her say that Dahlia had turned the key, and had been crying from mornings to nights. "It can't last," Mrs.
Word Of The Day