'Is she
pretty? What color is her hair?' But Jacob put up his hand and stopped
me. 'Thar!' he says, 'don't ask no questions, and I'll tell ye. Fust
place, she ain't no gal, no more'n yer Aunt Saleny is!' (that was a
maiden aunt of mine, dear, and well over forty at that time.) 'And what
does she look like?' 'Wal! D'ye ever see an old cedar fence-rail,--one
that had been chumped out with a blunt axe, and had laid out in the sun
and the wind and the snow and the rain till 'twas warped this way, and
shrunk that way, and twisted every way? Wal! Simon's wife looks as if
she had swallowed one o' them fence-rails, and _shrunk to it_! Dear,
dear! how I laughed. And 'twas true, my dear! It was just the way she
did look. Poor soul! she led a sad life; for when Simon found he'd made
a mistake about the money, there was no word too bad for him to fling at
her."
At this moment Farmer Hartley's step was heard in the porch, and Nurse
Lucy rose hurriedly. "Don't say anything to him, Hilda dear," she
whispered,--"anything about Simon, I mean. I'll tell him to-morrow; but
I don't want to trouble him to-night. This is our Faith's
birthday,--seventeen year old she'd have been to-day; and it's been a
right hard day for Jacob! I'll tell him about it in the morning."
Alas! when morning came it was too late. The kitchen door was swinging
idly open; the desk was broken open and rifled; and Simon Hartley was
gone, and with him the savings of ten years' patient labor.
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