The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin, very soft, and kneeled down and looked in;then she put up her handkerchief, and I see she begun to cry, though I couldn’t hear her,and her back was to me. I slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought I’d make sure them watchers hadn’t seen me;so I looked through the crack, and everything was all right. They hadn’t stirred.
I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue,on accounts of the thing playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much resk about it.Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right;because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to Mary Jane,and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain’t the thing that’s going to happen;the thing that’s going to happen is, the money ’ll be found when they come to screw on the lid.Then the king ’ll get it again, and it ’ll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smouch it from him.Of course I _wanted_ to slide down and get it out of there, but I dasn’t try it.Every minute it was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir,and I might get catched—catched with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn’t hired me to take care of.I don’t wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself.
When I got down stairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the watchers was gone.There warn’t nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our tribe.I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldn’t tell.
Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man,and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs,and then set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full.I see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but I dasn’t go to look in under it, with folks around.
Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin,and for a half an hour the people filed around slow, in single rank,and looked down at the dead man’s face a minute, and some dropped in a tear,and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent,and sobbing a little. There warn’t no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing noses—because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church.
When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black gloves with his softy soothering ways,putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable,and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around,he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods,and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest,glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see;and there warn’t no more smile to him than there is to a ham.
They had borrowed a melodeum—a sick one;and when everything was ready a young woman set down and worked it,and it was pretty skreeky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung,and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion.Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk;and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard;it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along;the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait—you couldn’t hear yourself think.It was right down awkward, and nobody didn’t seem to know what to do.But pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say,“Don’t you worry—just depend on me.” Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall,just his shoulders showing over the people’s heads. So he glided along,and the powwow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time; and at last,when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar.Then in about two seconds we heard a whack,and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still,and the parson begun his solemn talk where he left off.In a minute or two here comes this undertaker’s back and shoulders gliding along the wall again;and so he glided and glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up,and shaded his mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher,over the people’s heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, “_He had a rat!_” Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place.You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know.A little thing like that don’t cost nothing,and it’s just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked.There warn’t no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was.
Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome;and then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage,and at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the coffin with his screw-driver.I was in a sweat then, and watched him pretty keen. But he never meddled at all;just slid the lid along as soft as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was!I didn’t know whether the money was in there or not. So, says I,s’pose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly?—now how do _I_ know whether to write to Mary Jane or not?S’pose she dug him up and didn’t find nothing, what would she think of me?Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and jailed; I’d better lay low and keep dark,and not write at all; the thing’s awful mixed now; trying to better it,I’ve worsened it a hundred times, and I wish to goodness I’d just let it alone, dad fetch the whole business!
They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces again—I couldn’t help it,and I couldn’t rest easy. But nothing come of it; the faces didn’t tell me nothing.
The king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up,and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him,so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home.He was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could stay longer,but they said they could see it couldn’t be done.And he said of course him and William would take the girls home with them;and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed and amongst their own relations;and it pleased the girls, too—tickled them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world;and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready.Them poor things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so,but I didn’t see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune.
Well, blamed if the king didn’t bill the house and the niggers and all the property for auction straight off—sale two days after the funeral;but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to.
So the next day after the funeral, along about noon-time, the girls’ joy got the first jolt.A couple of nigger traders come along, and the king sold them the niggers reasonable,for three-day drafts as they called it, and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis,and their mother down the river to Orleans.I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief;they cried around each other, and took on so it most made me down sick to see it.The girls said they hadn’t ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town.I can’t ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other’s necks and crying;and I reckon I couldn’t a stood it all,but would a had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn’t knowed the sale warn’t no account and the niggers would be back home in a week or two.
The thing made a big stir in the town, too,and a good many come out flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way.It injured the frauds some; but the old fool he bulled right along,spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell you the duke was powerful uneasy.
Next day was auction day. About broad day in the morning the king and the duke come up in the garret and woke me up,and I see by their look that there was trouble. The king says:
“Was you in my room night before last?”
“No, your majesty”—which was the way I always called him when nobody but our gang warn’t around.
“Was you in there yisterday er last night?”
“No, your majesty.”
“Honor bright, now—no lies.”
“Honor bright, your majesty, I’m telling you the truth.I hain’t been a-near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed it to you.”
The duke says:
“Have you seen anybody else go in there?”
“No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe.”
“Stop and think.”
I studied awhile and see my chance; then I says:
“Well, I see the niggers go in there several times.”
Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn’t ever expected it,and then like they _had_. Then the duke says:
“What, _all_ of them?”
“No—leastways, not all at once—that is, I don’t think I ever see them all come _out_ at once but just one time. ”
“Hello!When was that?”
“It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It warn’t early, because I overslept.I was just starting down the ladder, and I see them.”
“Well, go on, _go_ on!What did they do?How’d they act?”
“They didn’t do nothing. And they didn’t act anyway much, as fur as I see. They tiptoed away;so I seen, easy enough, that they’d shoved in there to do up your majesty’s room, or something,s’posing you was up; and found you _warn’t_ up,and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn’t already waked you up.”
“Great guns, _this_ is a go!” says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick and tolerable silly.They stood there a-thinking and scratching their heads a minute,and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy chuckle, and says:
“It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand.They let on to be _sorry_ they was going out of this region!And I believed they _was_ sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody.Don’t ever tell _me_ any more that a nigger ain’t got any histrionic talent. Why,the way they played that thing it would fool _anybody_. In my opinion, there’s a fortune in ’em.If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn’t want a better lay-out than that—and here we’ve gone and sold ’em for a song.Yes, and ain’t privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where _is_ that song—that draft?”
“In the bank for to be collected. Where _would_ it be?”
“Well, _that’s_ all right then, thank goodness.”
Says I, kind of timid-like:
“Is something gone wrong?”
The king whirls on me and rips out:
“None o’ your business!You keep your head shet, and mind y’r own affairs—if you got any.Long as you’re in this town don’t you forgit _that_—you hear?” Then he says to the duke, “We got to jest swaller it and say noth’n’: mum’s the word for _us_.”
As they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and says:
“Quick sales _and_ small profits!It’s a good business—yes.”
v
The king snarls around on him and says:
“I was trying to do for the best in sellin’ ’em out so quick.If the profits has turned out to be none, lackin’ considable, and none to carry, is it my fault any more’n it’s yourn?”
“Well, _they’d_ be in this house yet and we _wouldn’t_ if I could a got my advice listened to.”
The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around and lit into _me_ again.He give me down the banks for not coming and _telling_ him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that way—said any fool would a _knowed_ something was up. And then waltzed in and cussed _himself_ awhile, and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning, and he’d be blamed if he’d ever do it again. So they went off a-jawing; and I felt dreadful glad I’d worked it all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn’t done the niggers no harm by it.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
By-and-by it was getting-up time. So I come down the ladder and started for down-stairs;but as I come to the girls’ room the door was open,and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk,which was open and she’d been packing things in it—getting ready to go to England.But she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, crying.I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. I went in there and says:
“Miss Mary Jane, you can’t a-bear to see people in trouble, and _I_ can’t—most always. Tell me about it.”
So she done it. And it was the niggers—I just expected it.She said the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her;she didn’t know _how_ she was ever going to be happy there,knowing the mother and the children warn’t ever going to see each other no more—and then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says:
“Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain’t _ever_ going to see each other any more!”
“But they _will_—and inside of two weeks—and I _know_ it!” says I.
Laws, it was out before I could think!And before I could budge she throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it _again_, say it _again_, say it _again!_
I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place.I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited and handsome,but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that’s had a tooth pulled out.So I went to studying it out. I says to myself,I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks,though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway;and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly _safer_ than a lie.I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other,it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last,I’m a-going to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time,though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to. Then I says:
“Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you could go and stay three or four days?”
“Yes; Mr. Lothrop’s. Why?”
“Never mind why yet. If I’ll tell you how I know the niggers will see each other again inside of two weeks—here in this house—and _prove_ how I know it—will you go to Mr. Lothrop’s and stay four days?”
“Four days!” she says; “I’ll stay a year!”
“All right,” I says, “I don’t want nothing more out of _you_ than just your word—I druther have it than another man’s kiss-the-Bible.” She smiled and reddened up very sweet, and I says, “If you don’t mind it, I’ll shut the door—and bolt it.”
Then I come back and set down again, and says:
“Don’t you holler. Just set still and take it like a man. I got to tell the truth,and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it’s a bad kind, and going to be hard to take,but there ain’t no help for it. These uncles of yourn ain’t no uncles at all;they’re a couple of frauds—regular dead-beats. There, now we’re over the worst of it, you can stand the rest middling easy.”
It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal water now,so I went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher all the time,and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat,clear through to where she flung herself on to the king’s breast at the front door and he kissed her sixteen or seventeen times—and then up she jumps,with her face afire like sunset, and says:
“The brute!Come, don’t waste a minute—not a _second_—we’ll have them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!”
Says I:
“Cert’nly. But do you mean _before_ you go to Mr. Lothrop’s, or—”
“Oh,” she says, “what am I _thinking_ about!” she says, and set right down again. “Don’t mind what I said—please don’t—you _won’t,_ now, _will_ you?” Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would die first.“I never thought, I was so stirred up,” she says; “now go on, and I won’t do so any more.You tell me what to do, and whatever you say I’ll do it.”
“Well,” I says, “it’s a rough gang, them two frauds,and I’m fixed so I got to travel with them a while longer,whether I want to or not—I druther not tell you why;and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and _I_’d be all right;but there’d be another person that you don’t know about who’d be in big trouble. Well, we got to save _him_, hain’t we?Of course. Well, then, we won’t blow on them.”
Saying them words put a good idea in my head.I see how maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave.But I didn’t want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard to answer questions but me;so I didn’t want the plan to begin working till pretty late to-night. I says:
“Miss Mary Jane, I’ll tell you what we’ll do, and you won’t have to stay at Mr. Lothrop’s so long, nuther. How fur is it?”
“A little short of four miles—right out in the country, back here.”
“Well, that’ll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or half-past to-night,and then get them to fetch you home again—tell them you’ve thought of something.If you get here before eleven put a candle in this window,and if I don’t turn up wait _till_ eleven, and _then_ if I don’t turn up it means I’m gone,and out of the way, and safe. Then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats jailed.”
“Good,” she says, “I’ll do it.”
“And if it just happens so that I don’t get away, but get took up along with them,you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can.”
“Stand by you!indeed I will. They sha’n’t touch a hair of your head!” she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too.
“If I get away I sha’n’t be here,” I says, “to prove these rapscallions ain’t your uncles,and I couldn’t do it if I _was_ here. I could swear they was beats and bummers, that’s all,though that’s worth something. Well, there’s others can do that better than what I can,and they’re people that ain’t going to be doubted as quick as I’d be.I’ll tell you how to find them. Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. There—‘_Royal Nonesuch,Bricksville_.’ Put it away, and don’t lose it.When the court wants to find out something about these two,let them send up to Bricksville and say they’ve got the men that played the Royal Nonesuch,and ask for some witnesses—why, you’ll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink,Miss Mary. And they’ll come a-biling, too.”
I judged we had got everything fixed about right now. So I says:
“Just let the auction go right along, and don’t worry.Nobody don’t have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on accounts of the short notice,and they ain’t going out of this till they get that money;and the way we’ve fixed it the sale ain’t going to count, and they ain’t going to _get_ no money.It’s just like the way it was with the niggers—it warn’t no sale,and the niggers will be back before long. Why,they can’t collect the money for the _niggers_ yet—they’re in the worst kind of a fix, Miss Mary.”
“Well,” she says, “I’ll run down to breakfast now, and then I’ll start straight for Mr. Lothrop’s.”
“’Deed, _that_ ain’t the ticket, Miss Mary Jane,” I says, “by no manner of means; go _before_ breakfast.”
“Why?”
“What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?”
“Well, I never thought—and come to think, I don’t know. What was it?”
“Why, it’s because you ain’t one of these leather-face people.I don’t want no better book than what your face is.A body can set down and read it off like coarse print.Do you reckon you can go and face your uncles when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never—”
“There, there, don’t!Yes, I’ll go before breakfast—I’ll be glad to. And leave my sisters with them?”
“Yes; never mind about them. They’ve got to stand it yet a while.They might suspicion something if all of you was to go. I don’t want you to see them,nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town;if a neighbor was to ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something. No,you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I’ll fix it with all of them.I’ll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say you’ve went away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change,or to see a friend, and you’ll be back to-night or early in the morning.”
“Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won’t have my love given to them.”
“Well, then, it sha’n’t be.” It was well enough to tell _her_ so—no harm in it.It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble;and it’s the little things that smooths people’s roads the most, down here below;it would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn’t cost nothing. Then I says:“There’s one more thing—that bag of money.”
“Well, they’ve got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think _how_ they got it.”
“No, you’re out, there. They hain’t got it.”
“Why, who’s got it?”
“I wish I knowed, but I don’t. I _had_ it, because I stole it from them;and I stole it to give to you; and I know where I hid it, but I’m afraid it ain’t there no more.I’m awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I’m just as sorry as I can be; but I done the best I could;I did honest. I come nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I come to, and run—and it warn’t a good place.”
“Oh, stop blaming yourself—it’s too bad to do it, and I won’t allow it—you couldn’t help it;it wasn’t your fault. Where did you hide it?”
I didn’t want to set her to thinking about her troubles again;and I couldn’t seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach.So for a minute I didn’t say nothing; then I says:
“I’d ruther not _tell_ you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don’t mind letting me off;but I’ll write it for you on a piece of paper, and you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop’s,if you want to. Do you reckon that’ll do?”
“Oh, yes.”
So I wrote: “I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was crying there, away in the night.I was behind the door, and I was mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane.”
It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by herself in the night,and them devils laying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her;and when I folded it up and give it to her I see the water come into her eyes, too;and she shook me by the hand, hard, and says:
“_Good_-bye. I’m going to do everything just as you’ve told me; and if I don’t ever see you again,I sha’n’t ever forget you and I’ll think of you a many and a many a time, and I’ll _pray_ for you, too!”—and she was gone.
Pray for me!I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it,just the same—she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion—there warn’t no back-down to her,I judge. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see;in my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain’t no flattery.And when it comes to beauty—and goodness, too—she lays over them all.I hain’t ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door; no,I hain’t ever seen her since, but I reckon I’ve thought of her a many and a many a million times,and of her saying she would pray for me;and if ever I’d a thought it would do any good for me to pray for _her_, blamed if I wouldn’t a done it or bust.
Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see her go.When I struck Susan and the hare-lip, I says:
“What’s the name of them people over on t’other side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes?”
They says:
“There’s several; but it’s the Proctors, mainly.”
“That’s the name,” I says; “I most forgot it. Well,Miss Mary Jane she told me to tell you she’s gone over there in a dreadful hurry—one of them’s sick. ”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it’s—”
“Sakes alive, I hope it ain’t _Hanner?_”
“I’m sorry to say it,” I says, “but Hanner’s the very one.”
“My goodness, and she so well only last week!Is she took bad?”
“It ain’t no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane said,and they don’t think she’ll last many hours.”
“Only think of that, now!What’s the matter with her?”
I couldn’t think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:
“Mumps.”
“Mumps your granny!They don’t set up with people that’s got the mumps.”
“They don’t, don’t they?You better bet they do with _these_ mumps. These mumps is different. It’s a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said.”
“How’s it a new kind?”
“Because it’s mixed up with other things.”
“What other things?”
“Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and yaller janders,and brain-fever, and I don’t know what all.”
“My land!And they call it the _mumps?_”
“That’s what Miss Mary Jane said.”
“Well, what in the nation do they call it the _mumps_ for?”
“Why, because it _is_ the mumps. That’s what it starts with.”
“Well, ther’ ain’t no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take pison,and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out,and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, ‘Why,he stumped his _toe_.’ Would ther’ be any sense in that?_No_. And ther’ ain’t no sense in _this_, nuther. Is it ketching?”
“Is it _ketching?_ Why, how you talk. Is a _harrow_ catching—in the dark?If you don’t hitch on to one tooth, you’re bound to on another, ain’t you?And you can’t get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you?Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say—and it ain’t no slouch of a harrow,nuther, you come to get it hitched on good.”
“Well, it’s awful, _I_ think,” says the hare-lip. “I’ll go to Uncle Harvey and—”
“Oh, yes,” I says, “I _would_. Of _course_ I would. I wouldn’t lose no time.”
“Well, why wouldn’t you?”
“Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see.Hain’t your uncles obleegd to get along home to England as fast as they can?And do you reckon they’d be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves?_You_ know they’ll wait for you. So fur, so good. Your uncle Harvey’s a preacher, ain’t he?Very well, then; is a _preacher_ going to deceive a steamboat clerk?is he going to deceive a _ship clerk?_—so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard?Now _you_ know he ain’t. What _will_ he do, then?Why, he’ll say, ‘It’s a great pity, but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can;for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps,and so it’s my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she’s got it.’ But never mind, if you think it’s best to tell your uncle Harvey—”
“Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane’s got it or not?Why, you talk like a muggins.”
“Well, anyway, maybe you’d better tell some of the neighbors.”
“Listen at that, now. You do beat all for natural stupidness.Can’t you _see_ that _they’d_ go and tell?Ther’ ain’t no way but just to not tell anybody at _all_.”
“Well, maybe you’re right—yes, I judge you _are_ right.”
“But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she’s gone out a while, anyway, so he won’t be uneasy about her?”
“Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that. She says,‘Tell them to give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss,and say I’ve run over the river to see Mr.’—Mr.—what _is_ the name of that rich family your uncle Peter used to think so much of?—I mean the one that—”
“Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain’t it?”
“Of course; bother them kind of names, a body can’t ever seem to remember them, half the time,somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run over for to ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house,because she allowed her uncle Peter would ruther they had it than anybody else;and she’s going to stick to them till they say they’ll come, and then, if she ain’t too tired,she’s coming home; and if she is, she’ll be home in the morning anyway. She said,don’t say nothing about the Proctors, but only about the Apthorps—which’ll be perfectly true,because she _is_ going there to speak about their buying the house; I know it, because she told me so herself.”
“All right,” they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles,and give them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message.