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She's tuck a funny sort o' notion that she don't want you at the funeral or the buryin'. She told me three times, as I was startin' off, to tell you not to come to the church nur to the grave. She was clean out o' her senses, an' under ordinary circumstances I'd say not to pay a bit of attention to 'er, but she's so upset she might liter'ly pounce on you like a wild-cat at the meetin'-house."
Well, I cal'late that depends some on what dictionary you hunt up the word in. He's pious, sartin. There ain't many that report on deck at the meetin'-house more reg'lar than he does. He don't cal'late to miss a prayer-meetin' and when there's a revival goin' on he's right up front with the mourners.
Then the sun riz and the fog lifted, and there we was within sight of the South Ostable meetin'-house. We'd sailed eighteen miles in that ark and made a better landin' blindfold than we ever could have made on purpose. "I hauled down the sail, unshipped the mast, and jumped ashore to find a rock big enough to use for a makeshift anchor.
"Any man that can put Kun'l Gid Ward where he belongs is a better thing for the town than a new meetin'-house would be." But during all this flurry of gossip Cap'n Aaron Sproul spent his bland and blissful days up under the shade of the big maple in the Ward dooryard, smoking his pipe, and gazing out over the expanse of meadow and woodland stretching away to the horizon.
"You kin call yourself Abbie if you choose," he used to say, "and 'tain't none o' my business, but I was in the meetin'-house and heard Zeke let drive, and b'gosh it sounded just like a buzz-saw strikin' the butt-end of a log. 'Abijah! Abijah! he hollered. Shet Parson Simmons up same's a steel trap. Gosh, but it was funny!"
Sister Blanker wuz about the only one who come out hull, and she had plenty of time to set down and mourn over a lack of opportunities to do good, and to talk a sight about the lukewarmness of members of the meetin'-house in good works. And there they wuz to home a-sufferin', and it wuz her own self who had brung it all on.
Sherd Raines goes up to see her, and folks say he air tryin' to git her into the church. But the gal won't go nigh a meetin'-house. She air a cur'us critter," he concluded emphatically, " shy as a deer till she air stirred up, and then she air a caution; mighty gentle sometimes, and ag'in stubborn as a mule." A shrill, infantile scream came from within, and the old man paused a moment to listen.
Sez I, "I should be ashamed if I wuz in your place, the father and grandfather of a family, and the deacon in a meetin'-house, to be up at midnight a-posin' for statutes and actin'." "But," sez he, "I didn't know but they would want to sculp me while I wuz here in Chicago, and I thought I'd git a attitude all ready.
She looked provokingly up into his face and he looked fondly down into hers. "Don't you?" she repeated. "We-ll, I I don't know as I'd want to go so far as to say that. I presume likely her face might not stop a meetin'-house clock on a dark night, but "
"What a troop of pussies there is round here," said I; "I wonder what will become of them in the winter, though, to be sure, the fishing goes on just the same." "The better part of them don't get through the cold weather," said Danny. "Two or three of the old ones have been here for years, and are as much belonging to Deephaven as the meetin'-house; but the rest of them an't to be depended on.
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