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With a scream of fright, the two old maids jumyed up, dropping their precious tea-cups, and old Mathias, who had tipped his chair a little backward, lost his balance, and pointed his heels toward the ceiling. Before he had time to pick himself up the door was burst open and a great hairy monster sprang into the room. "Mercy upon us!" cried Jemina. "It is the devil!"
She sat down on the grass and counted her toes. She counted eleven. She had learned arithmetic in the mountain school. Ten years before a lady from the settlements had opened a school on the mountain. Jemina had no money, but she had paid her way in whiskey, bringing a pailful to school every morning and leaving it on Miss Lafarge's desk.
"Father! father!" shrieked Jemina. Her father took down his slingshot from his slingshot rack on the wall and ran his hand lovingly over the elastic band. He stepped to a loophole. Old Mappy Tantrum stepped to the coalhole. The stranger was aroused at last. Furious to get at the Doldrums, he tried to escape from the house by crawling up the chimney.
"And I will venture to say," cried Hector, eagerly gazing from the window, "that four handsomer or better-matched bays never were put in harness What fine forehands! what capital chargers they would make! Might I ask if they are of your lordship's own breeding?" "They are of your lordship's own breeding," said Calvert, "got by Mad Tom out of Jemina and Yarico, your lordship's brood mares."
Then he thought there might be a door under the bead, but Jemina told him there was not. He hunted for doors under the beds and sofas, but each time Jemina pulled him out and told him there were no doors there. Furious with anger, he beat upon the door and hollered at the Doldrums. They did not answer him, but kept up their fusillade of bricks and stones against the window.
It so happened that Paul selected the house of two middle-aged milliners for this experiment. Jemina and Malla Hansen were just seated at the table drinking tea with their one constant visitor, the post-office clerk, Mathias, when, all of a sudden, they heard a tremendous racket in the hall, and the furious barking of dogs.
And I'll thank you another time, Cousin Higginbotham, not to put me out when I'm speaking on matters of importance; poking your cat into my stocks! They look something like now, my stocks, don't they, Harry? I declare that the whole village seems more respectable. It is astonishing how much a little improvement adds to the to the " "Charm of the landscape," put in Miss Jemina, sentimentally.
Soon smoke began to filter through the floor and ceiling. Shem Doldrum had come up and touched a match to old Japhet Tantrum's breath as he leaned from a loophole, and the alcoholic flames shot up on all sides. The whiskey in the bathtub caught fire. The walls began to fall in. Jemina and the man from the settlements looked at each other. "Jemina," he whispered. "Stranger," she answered,
Jemina, he said, had helped some when pointed at Manuel's scowling face; but Jerry opined that he would hereafter take the twins along too when he rode out anywhere, and that he guessed he'd cut another loophole or two in his cabin walls. All of these various influences had created an atmosphere which Teresita felt and resented without attempting to understand.
"And I will venture to say," cried Hector, eagerly gazing from the window, "that four handsomer or better-matched bays never were put in harness What fine forehands! what capital chargers they would make! Might I ask if they are of your lordship's own breeding?" "They are of your lordship's own breeding," said Calvert, "got by Mad Tom out of Jemina and Yarico, your lordship's brood mares."
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