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Updated: June 1, 2025
Alas! even his editorial omniscience did not know how could it? the story of that night. Keturah forgave him. It is perhaps worthy of mention that Miss Humdrum appeared promptly at eight o'clock the next morning, with her handkerchief at her eyes. "My Star-spangled Banner has met with her decease, Ketury." "Indeed! How very sad!" "Yes. She has met with her decease.
"Well," she observed, "I don't want to be unlikely and disobligin'. Far's he's concerned, he'd rather be traipsin' round the country than stay to home, any day; though it's been so long sence he took ME to ride that I don't know's I'd know how to act." "Why, Ketury!" protested her husband. "How you talk! Didn't I drive you down to the graveyard only last Sunday or the Sunday afore?" "Graveyard!
But when I heard those women at the meetin' house goin' on about how pretty 'Licia Atkins was got up and how mean and shabby Bos'n looked, it made me bile. And, by the big dipper, I WILL show 'em somethin' afore I get through, too! Only, dressin' little girls is some off my usual course. Bailey, does Ketury make her own duds?" "Why, no!
Everybody thought that Ketury was a witch: at least, she knew consid'able more'n she ought to know, and so they was kind o' 'fraid on her. Cap'n Eb says he never see a fellow seem scareder than Cack did when he see Ketury a-standin' there.
Then Ketury shook her stick up chimbley, and called, 'Come down, come down! And there came down a pair o' arms, and went on each side o' the body; and there stood a man all finished, only there wa'n't no head on him. "'Wal, Ketury, says Cap'n Eb, 'this 'ere's getting serious. I 'spec' you must finish him up, and let's see what he wants of us.
"No, Ketury was sot on havin' the barn cleaned, and she stood over me with a rope's end, as you might say. I couldn't get away a minute, though I made up more'n a dozen errands at Simmons's and the like of that. You hold on till I sneak into the entry and get my cap and we'll put for there now. I won't be but a jiffy. I'm worried."
What's the stuff goes into that, Cy?" "'Material, batiste, trimmed with embroidered batiste. What in time is batiste?" "I don't know. Do you, Bailey?" "No; never heard of it. Ketury never had nothin' like that, I'm sure. French, I shouldn't wonder. Well, Ketury's down on the French ever sence she read about Napoleon leavin' his fust wife to take up with another woman. Does it say any more?"
Ketury used to come to meetin', and sit there on them Indian benches; and when the second bell was a-tollin', and when Parson Lothrop and his wife was comin' up the broad aisle, and everybody in the house ris' up and stood, Ketury would sit there, and look at 'em out o' the corner o' her eyes; and folks used to say she rattled them necklaces o' rattlesnakes' tails and wild-cat teeth, and sich like heathen trumpery, and looked for all the world as if the spirit of the old Sarpent himself was in her.
Bangs, enthroned at the end of the long table, behind the silver-plated teapot, was waiting to receive them. The silence was appalling. "Sorry to be a little behindhand, Ketury," stammered Asaph hurriedly. "Town affairs are important, of course, and can't be neglected. "Yes, yes; that's so, Ketury," cut in Mr. Bangs. "You see " "Hum! Yes, I see." Keturah's tone was several degrees below freezing.
Neither's Bailey, I judge, though for a while he was as full of suggestions as a pine grove is of woodticks. He started to say somethin' about it to me last night, but Ketury hove in sight and yanked him off to prayer meetin'." "Yes, I know. She cal'lates to get him into heaven somehow." "I guess 'twouldn't BE heaven for her unless he was round to pick at. There he comes now.
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