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It certainly was aunt Hannah's presence, for when the girls left the out-room and trooped up to Mary's chamber, they grew cheerful as birds again; and it was delightful to see them aiding each other in the arrangement of the little finery which was intended to make terrible havoc among the young men's hearts below.
All the corn was housed and stacked upon the barn floor, which had been swept and garnished for the occasion; for after the husking was to come a dance not in the house, aunt Hannah had some old-fashioned prejudices about that and uncle Nat shrunk from the idea of having a frolic in the out-room where poor Anna had died; so as the barn was large and the room sufficient, the play usually ended where the work began, upon the barn floor, which was always industriously cleared from the corn-stalks as the husking went on.
"Well, I suppose it's her, by the way she put out her hand but she's grown as beautiful as a blooming wild rose, I can tell you. Now, good day, don't let them pies burn or have them underdone at the bottom. I'll try and run over to-night, but you mustn't depend on me; every thing is uncertain where Miss Farnham is." Away went Salina through the out-room and into the street.
But there was no doubt of one thing, that our Halloween at Westover was a famous little party. "How do you all feel about it?" asked Barbara, sitting down on the hearth in the brown room, before the embers, and throwing the nuts she had picked up about the carpet into the coals. We had carried the supper-dishes away into the out-room, and set them on a great spare table that we kept there.
"Humph?" said Salina, snuffing the air, "what's the use talking!" and seizing the rolling-pin, she began with both hands to press out a flat of gingerbread, and proceeded to cut it up into square cards, which she marked in stripes with the back of her knife. Just then aunt Hannah came from the out-room rapidly, and with a strange look in her usually cold eyes.
"Well, as I was a-saying about that night. There was a baby's night-gown on the door-sill. I took it up and looked at it. It was fine cotton, edged round with a little worked pattern, such as I'd seen our Anna working there in the out-room.
Farnham, his mother, and Salina. After that call for Judge Sharp." "Do you want them at ten?" "Yes!" Aunt Hannah went out, and from that hour till after nine, was shut up alone in the out-room.
Meanwhile, with a pair of gloves on, and a little plain-hemmed three-cornered, dotted-muslin cap tied over her hair with a muslin bow behind, mother had let down the ashes, it isn't a bad thing to do with a well-contrived stove, and set the pan, to which we had a duplicate, into the out-room, for Stephen to carry away.
"I got up to go, but it was of no use; my knees shook, and knocked together; the porch seemed whirling around, rain and all; I made one step toward the out-room; fell into the chair, and burst out a crying. The baby's voice had taken away all my strength." "But you didn't sit here all night, in a storm like this!" said Mary. "After awhile I don't know how long I got up and went into the house.
There was also one Freeman, who was more than an ordinary doctor, sent for, to cast out this devil; and I was there when he attempted to do it; the manner thereof was this: They had the possessed into an out-room, and laid him on his belly upon a form, with his head hanging over the form's end.
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