Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 6, 2025
Calc'late you'll see I figgered clost to right.... Marthy's a-sittin' there with Jed in the hammick, and they're a-holdin' on their lap the doggondest best soothin' syrup f'r man and wife that any doctor c'u'd perscribe.... Calculate it's one of them nature's remedies.... Go take a look, Postmaster.... G'-by."
Grandma compared her favorably with her own grandchildren, especially Mrs. Dorcas' eldest daughter Martha, who was nearly Ann's age. "Marthy's a pretty little gal enough," she used to say, "but she ain't got the snap to her that Ann has, though I wouldn't tell Atherton's wife so, for the world."
Meet her with her pink sunbonnet hanging down the back of her neck and her big eyes taking in the squalidness of Marthy's crude kitchen in the Cove, and her terrible directness of speech hitting squarely the things she saw that were different from her own immaculate home.
Then she stood still and looked and looked, her hard face growing each moment more pinched and stony and gray. Jase had died while the coyotes were yapping their dawn-song up on the rim of the Cove. He lay rigid under the coarse, gray blanket, the flesh of his face drawn close to the bones, his skimpy, gray beard tilted upward. Marthy's jaw set into a harsher outline than ever.
Once before in her life Billy Louise had seen Marthy's chin quivering like that, and big, slow tears sliding down the network of lines on Marthy's leathery cheeks. With a painful slump her spirits went heavy with her sympathy. "Marthy!" She knew without a word of explanation just what had happened.
It was only for a minute that Marthy did this; she stopped almost as suddenly as she began and went outside, wiping her eyes and her nose impartially upon her dirty apron. Billy Louise sat paralyzed with the mixture of unusual emotions that assailed her. She was exceedingly sticky and uncomfortable from honey and tears, and she shivered with repugnance at the odor of Marthy's unbathed person.
Can you wonder that they loved this amazing person who tugged their hearts this way and that with ail the dear old songs that those they'd loved best had once sung to them? Janet's crooning Scotch songs, Molly's wistful Irish ballads, Margot's naughty French and Marthy's sentimental loves, Grandy's English favorites too, it seemed as though she could never give them enough of them ten minutes!
But they are keepin' it up, because Graceston's is, and so it goes all over the country. Now I call it a slap right in the face to have a Chicagy woman come to the country to live and enjoy a log cabin, bare floors, and her man's grandmother's dishes. If there ain't Marthy's old blue coverlid also carefully spread on a splinter new sofy. Landy, I can't wait to get to my son John's!
I was over at Hannah Crawford's one day, and she says, says she, 'Jane, I've been savin' up my eggs and butter for a month to make Marthy's weddin' cake, and if her and Amos don't come to an understandin' soon, it'll all be a dead loss. And Marthy says, 'Well, mother, I may not have any cake at my weddin', and I may not have any weddin', but one thing is certain: I'm not goin' to give up my principles.
"Sometimes she ought and sometimes she oughtn't," replied Aunt Jane oracularly. "There ain't any rule about it. Everybody's got to be their own judge about such matters. If I'd 'a' been in Marthy's place, I wouldn't 'a' j'ined Amos' church, and if I'd been in Amos' place I wouldn't 'a' j'ined Marthy's church. So there it is." "But didn't you join Uncle Abram's church?"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking