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Daily, almost hourly, the wisdom of single blessedness had been impressed upon Araminta. Miss Mehitable neglected no illustration calculated to bring the lesson home. She had even taught her that her own mother was an outcast and had brought disgrace upon her family by marrying; she had held aloft her maiden standard and literally compelled Araminta to enlist.
Nobody ever saw it, however, and the gaudy woollen roses blushed unseen. A white linen cover, severely plain, was put upon the footstool every Wednesday and every Saturday, year in and year out. Unlike most good housewives, Miss Mehitable used her parlour every day in the week. She was obliged to, in fact, for it was the only room in her house, except Mr.
Miss Mehitable returned her regard affectionately. The golden hair had been wound up and secured with Mrs. Barry's hairpins. "I wish there were some way by which I need never see him again," she said. "Why, Miss Melody, child, what do you mean? Every word I told you in my letter was true. Perhaps you never got it, but I told you that he is the finest "
"Anywhere with you, Master," returned the boy. He felt certain that Rufus Carder would not be met among the clouds, but who could be sure that he would not pop up in a trolley car. "Very well, then. Good-bye, everybody, and expect us when you see us." "Good-bye, you dear boy," cried Miss Mehitable. Somebody should call him "dear." She was determined on that.
She was sister to Mehitable Ginger, Gineral Sullivan's housekeeper, and hed the in and out o' the Sullivan house, and kind o' kept the run o' how things went and came in it. Polly she was a kind o' cousin o' my mother's, and allers glad to see me.
Whipp cracking the air with chuckles, Mehitable rocking the store with her activities, Miss Melody enveloped in a gigantic apron and with a large smudge across her cheek, having the time of her life unpacking boxes. I was sorry to bereave them of Pete, but it won't take them long now to be ready for business." Mrs. Barry did not speak. A catbird sang in an apple tree, a call to vespers.
"To Rockcrest, Lamson." Miss Mehitable went back into the house. She suspected she should find Charlotte weeping, and she did. "I s'pose I can't never say anything right," sniffed the injured one upon her employer's entrance. "Never mind us, Charlotte," responded Miss Upton. "That's a very big thing that's just happened. I'm so tickled I'd dance if I thought the house would stand it."
Now, all her work had gone for naught. Nature had triumphantly reasserted itself, and Araminta had fallen in love. The years stretched before Miss Mehitable in a vast and gloomy vista illumined by no light. No soft step upon the stair, no sunny face at her table, no sweet, girlish laugh, no long companionable afternoons with patchwork, while she talked and Araminta listened.
On the Friday morning referred to, it had come Halstead's turn "to stand up with old Mehitable," as Ellen used to say; and after the usual heated argument he had set about it out in the kitchen in a particularly wrathy mood. It was snowing outside.
"Don't you dare to touch that hat!" she added severely to Geraldine, whose cheeks flushed deeply as a tattoo began on the locked door. So the girl was standing in the middle of the room wearing the droopy hat when Ben came in, followed by the dwarf at whom Miss Mehitable and Charlotte stared.
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