Homespun Tales | Page 8

you remember the meat, grandpa? We're all out," she said, as she
began buttoning a stiff collar around his reluctant neck.
"Remember? Land, yes! I wish't I ever could forgit anything! The
butcher says he's 'bout tired o' travelin' over the country lookin' for
critters to kill, but if he finds anything he'll be up along in the course of
a week. He ain't a real smart butcher, Cyse Higgins ain't.--Land, Rose,
don't button that dickey clean through my epperdummis! I have to sport
starched collars in this life on account o' you and your gran'mother
bein' so chock full o' style; but I hope to the Lord I shan't have to wear
'em in another world!"

"You won't," his wife responded with the snap of a dish towel, "or if
you do, they'll wilt with the heat."
Rose smiled, but the soft hand with which she tied the neckcloth about
the old man's withered neck pacified his spirit, and he smiled
knowingly back at her as she took her seat at the breakfast table spread
near the open kitchen door. She was a dazzling Rose, and, it is to be
feared, a wasted one, for there was no one present to observe her clean
pink calico and the still more subtle note struck in the green ribbon
which was tied round her throat,--the ribbon that formed a sort of calyx,
out of which sprang the flower of her face, as fresh and radiant as if it
had bloomed that morning.
"Give me my coffee turrible quick," said Mr. Wiley; "I must be down
to the bridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam."
"I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days," remarked
his spouse, testily.
"'T ain't me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the old man.
"The boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air ricked up jest like
Rose's jack-straws; I never see 'em so turrible ricked up in all my
exper'ence; an' Lije Dennett don' know no more 'bout pickin' a jam than
Cooper's cow. Turrible sot in his ways, too; can't take a mite of advice.
I was tellin' him how to go to work on that bung that's formed between
the gre't gray rock an' the shore, --the awfullest place to bung that there
is between this an' Biddeford,- and says he: 'Look here, I've be'n boss
on this river for twelve year, an' I'll be doggoned if I'm goin' to be
taught my business by any man!' 'This ain't no river,' says I, 'as you'd
know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on the Kennebec.' 'Pity you hed n't
stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land I hed,' says I. An' then I come
away, for my tongue's so turrible spry an' sarcustic that I knew if I
stopped any longer I should stir up strife. There's some folks that'll set
on addled aigs year in an' year out, as if there wa'n't good fresh ones
bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's one of 'em, when it comes to
river-drivin'."
"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their own

business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared a
soda biscuit with her fork.
"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded her
husband loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what you
are,--partic'larly if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd ought, as a
Kennebec man an' a Christian, to set him on the right track, though it's
always a turrible risky thing to do." Rose's grandfather was called, by
the irreverent younger generation, sometimes "Turrible Wiley" and
sometimes "Old Kennebec," because of the frequency with which these
words appeared in his conversation. There were not wanting those of
late who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for reasons too obvious to
mention. After a long, indolent, tolerably truthful, and useless life, he
had, at seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing line between fact and
fancy, and drew on his imagination to such an extent that he almost
staggered himself when he began to indulge in reminiscence. He was a
feature of the Edgewood "drive," being always present during the five
or six days that it was in progress, sometimes sitting on the river-bank,
sometimes leaning over the bridge, sometimes reclining against the
butt-end of a huge log, but always chewing tobacco and expectorating
to incredible distances as he criticized and damned impartially all the
expedients in use at the particular moment.
"I want to stay down by the river this afternoon," said Rose. "Ever so
many of the girls will be there, and all my sewing is done up. If
grandpa will leave the horse for me, I'll take the drivers' lunch to them
at noon, and