United States or Bulgaria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"You take my word for't, they'll be back 'afore long." Nabby proved a true prophet. Red Robin did come trotting back from the Vermont wilds, bearing his master and mistress before long. Various considerations induced them to return; and Mrs. Polly was overjoyed. They came to live with her.
"Well, Hector, we burn peat in our fires at Lexington, too." "Then you're more civilized than I thought." "Oh, all we really lack are the bagpipes and some of those second-sight men and Scotch ghosts, who foretell what is going to happen. It's strange some of them didn't tell Nabby Crombie he ought to take his cannon with him when he attacked Ticonderoga."
Not a tear sparkled in her black eyes, watching the pair start off down the bridle-path, riding Red Robin, Ann on a pillion behind her husband. But, sitting down beside her lonely hearth when she entered the house, she cried bitterly. "I did hope I could keep Ann with me as long as I lived," she sobbed. "Don't you take on," said Nabby, consolingly.
Inside, she bolted the door, and made her unwelcome guest take off his boots in the kitchen, and follow her softly up stairs with them in his hand. Ann's terror, leading him up, almost overwhelmed her. What if anybody should wake! Nabby slept near the head of the stairs. Luckily, she was a little deaf, and Ann counted on that.
But there was a peculiarity about Nabby she had an exceedingly bitter hatred of rats and mice. Still there was no danger of her investigating the grain-chests on her own account, for she was very much afraid. She would not have lifted one of those lids, with the chance of a rat or mouse being under it, for the world.
"O, I wouldn't go up there to-night," said she. "Yes; I am going. I'm going to satisfy Nabby about the rats in the grain-chest, if I can." She was out the door, at the foot of the stairs, Nabby behind her, dishcloth and plate in hand, peering fearfully over her shoulder. Ann was in despair. Only one chance of averting the discovery suggested itself to her. She tipped over the churn.
Beside, her conscience troubled her sadly; she was far from being sure that she was doing right in hiding a thief from justice. But the poor man's tears, and the mention of his daughter, had turned the scale with her; she could not give him up. Her greatest fear was lest Mrs. Polly should take a notion to search for mice in the grain-chests. She so hoped Nabby would not broach the subject again.
Her audience expressed a breathless interest. "You see," she said, "I used to know her when she was Nabby Smith. She was Parson Smith's daughter, at Weymouth, and as handsome a girl as ever I wanted to see, just as graceful as a sweet-brier bush. I don't believe any of those English ladies looked one bit better than she did. She was always a master-hand at writing.
There was an old lady come to our house once that used to say, 'There's sister Nabby, now: she 'n' I ain't no more alike 'n if we wa'n't two; she 's jest as diff'rent as I am t' other way. Well, I know what I want to put into my rag story, Miss Hollis, but I don't hardly know how to begin." Priscilla dropped her needle, and bent over the frame with interest.
If ever a mouse was seen in the kitchen Nabby took immediate refuge on the settle or the table and left some one else to do the fighting. So Nabby, being so constituted, could not be easy on the subject this time. All day long she heard rats and mice in the grain-chests; she stopped and listened with her broom, and she stopped and listened with her mop.
Word Of The Day