‘Mr. Scudder used to say that it took great afflictions to bring his mind to that place,’ said Mrs. Katy. ‘He used to say that an old paper-maker told him once, that paper that was shaken only one way in the making would tear across the other, and the best paper had to be shaken every way; and so he said we couldn’t tell, till we had been turned and shaken and tried every way, where we should tear.’
Mrs. Twitchel responded to this sentiment with a gentle series of groans, such as were her general expression of approbation, swaying herself backward and forward; while Mrs. Brown gave a sort of toss and snort, and said that for her part she always thought people knew what they did know—but she guessed she was mistaken.
The conversation was here interrupted by the civilities attendant on the reception of Mrs. Jones—a broad, buxom, hearty soul, who had come on horseback from a farm about three miles distant.
Smiling with rosy content, she presented Mrs. Katy a small pot of golden butter—the result of her forenoon’s churning.
There are some people so evidently broadly and heartily of this world, that their coming into a room always materializes the conversation. We wish to be understood that we mean no disparaging reflection on such persons;—they are as necessary to make up a world as cabbages to make up a garden; the great healthy principles of cheerfulness and animal life seem to exist in them in the gross; they are wedges and ingots of solid, contented vitality. Certain kinds of virtues and Christian graces thrive in such people as the first crop of corn does in the bottom-lands of the Ohio. Mrs. Jones was a church-member, a regular church-goer, and planted her comely person plump in front of Dr. H. every Sunday, and listened to his searching and discriminating sermons with broad, honest smiles of satisfaction. Those keen distinctions as to motives, those awful warnings and urgent expostulations, which made poor Deacon Twitchel weep, she listened to with great, round, satisfied eyes, making to all, and after all, the same remark—that it was good, and she liked it, and the Doctor was a good man; and on the present occasion, she announced her pot of butter as one fruit of her reflections after the last discourse.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘as I was a-settin’ in the spring-house, this mornin’, a-workin’ my butter, I says to Dinah—“I’m goin’ to carry a pot of this down to Miss Scudder for the Doctor—I got so much good out of his Sunday’s sermon.” And Dinah she says to me, says she—“Laws, Miss Jones, I thought you was asleep, for sartin!” But I wasn’t; only I forgot to take any carraway-seed in the mornin’, and so I kinder missed it; you know it ’livens one up. But I never lost myself so but what I kinder heerd him goin’ on, on, sort o’ like—and it sounded all sort o’ good; and so I thought of the Doctor to-day.’
‘Well, I’m sure,’ said Aunt Katy, ‘this will be a treat; we all know about your butter, Mrs. Jones. I sha’n’t think of putting any of mine on table to-night, I’m sure.’
‘Law, now don’t!’ said Mrs. Jones. ‘Why you re’lly make me ashamed, Miss Scudder. To be sure, folks does like our butter, and it always fetches a pretty good price—he’s very proud on’t. I tell him he oughtn’t to be—we oughtn’t to be proud of anything.’
And now Mrs. Katy, giving a look at the old clock, told Mary it was time to set the tea-table; and forthwith there was a gentle movement of expectancy. The little mahogany tea-table opened its brown wings, and from a drawer came forth the snowy damask covering. It was etiquette, on such occasions, to compliment every article of the establishment successively as it appeared; so the Deacon’s wife began at the table-cloth.
‘Well, I do declare, Miss Scudder beats us all in her table-cloths,’ she said, taking up a corner of the damask, admiringly; and Mrs. Jones forthwith jumped up and seized the other corner.
‘Why, this ’ere must have come from the Old Country. It’s most the beautiflest thing I ever did see.’
‘It’s my own spinning,’ replied Mrs. Katy, with conscious dignity. ‘There was an Irish weaver came to Newport the year before I was married, who wove beautifully—just the Old-Country patterns—and I’d been spinning some uncommonly fine flax then. I remember Mr. Scudder used to read to me while I was spinning,’—and Aunt Katy looked afar, as one whose thoughts are in the past, and dropped out the last words with a little sigh, unconsciously, as to herself.
‘Wall, now, I must say,’ said Mrs. Jones, ‘this goes quite beyond me. I thought I could spin some; but I shan’t never dare to show mine.’
‘I’m sure, Mrs. Jones, your towels that you had out bleaching, this spring, were wonderful,’ said Aunt Katy. ‘But I don’t pretend to do much now,’ she continued, straightening her trim figure. ‘I’m getting old, you know; we must let the young folks take up these things. Mary spins better now than I ever did; Mary, hand out those napkins.’
And so Mary’s napkins passed from hand to hand.
‘Well, well,’ said Mrs. Twitchel to Mary, ‘it’s easy to see that your linen-chest will be pretty full by the time he comes along; won’t it, Miss Jones?’—and Mrs. Twitchel looked pleasantly facetious, as elderly ladies generally do, when suggesting such possibilities to younger ones.
Mary was vexed to feel the blood boil up in her cheeks in a most unexpected and provoking way at the suggestion; whereat Mrs. Twitchel nodded knowingly at Mrs. Jones, and whispered something in a mysterious aside, to which plump Mrs. Jones answered—‘Why, do tell! now I never!’
‘It’s strange,’ said Mrs. Twitchel, taking up her parable again, in such a plaintive tone that all knew something pathetic was coming, ‘what mistakes some folks will make, a-fetchin’ up girls. Now there’s your Mary, Miss Scudder—why, there a’n’t nothin’ she can’t do: but law, I was down to Miss Skinner’s, last week, a-watchin’ with her, and re’lly it ’most broke my heart to see her. Her mother was a most amazin’ smart woman; but she brought Suky up, for all the world, as if she’d been a wax doll, to be kept in the drawer—and sure enough, she was a pretty cretur—and now she’s married, what is she? She ha’n’t no more idee how to take hold than nothin’. The poor child means well enough, and she works so hard she ’most kills herself; but then she is in the suds from mornin’ till night—she’s one the sort whose work’s never done—and poor George Skinner’s clean discouraged.’
‘There’s everything in knowing how,’ said Mrs. Katy. ‘Nobody ought to be always working; it’s a bad sign. I tell Mary—“Always do up your work in the forenoon.” Girls must learn that. I never work afternoons, after my dinner dishes are got away; I never did and never would.’
‘Nor I, neither,’ chimed in Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Twitchel—both anxious to show themselves clear on this leading point of New-England housekeeping.
‘There’s another thing I always tell Mary,’ said Mrs. Katy, impressively. ‘ “Never say there isn’t time for a thing that ought to be done. If a thing is necessary, why, life is long enough to find a place for it. That’s my doctrine. When anybody tells me they can’t find time for this or that, I don’t think much of ’em. I think they don’t know how to work—that’s all.” ’
Here Mrs. Twitchel looked up from her knitting, with apologetic giggle at Mrs. Brown.
‘Law, now, there’s Miss Brown, she don’t know nothin’ about it, ’cause she’s got her servants to every turn. I s’pose she thinks it queer to hear us talkin’ about our work. Miss Brown must have her time all to herself. I was tellin’ the Deacon the other