How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Years | Page 2

character of his benediction and partly because he was feeling so jolly inside he couldn't help it, laughed merrily, as he seized a boot and thrust his foot vigorously into it.
"What's this? what's this?" cried the deacon, as he tugged away at the straps until he was red in the face. "This boot never went on hard before. What's the matter with the pesky thing?" And he arose from his chair, and, standing on one foot, turned and twisted about, tugging all the while at the straps.
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the deacon, disgusted with its strange behavior, "what is the matter with the pesky boot?"
[Illustration: "_What's the matter with the pesky thing?_"]
Then he sat down upon the chair again, wrenched his foot out of the offending article and held it up between both hands in front of him and shook it violently, when, with a bump and a bound, out rattled a package upon the floor and rolled half way across the room. The deacon was after it in a jiffy and, seizing it in his little fat hands, held it up before his eyes and read: "A New Year's gift from Miranda."
Now Miranda was the deacon's housekeeper,--Mrs. Tubman having peacefully departed this life some years before,--and, speaking appreciatively of the sex, a more prim, prudent, particular member of it never existed. She had been initiated, some ten years before, into that amiable sisterhood commonly known as spinsters, and was, it might be added, a typical representative. Industrious? You may well say so. Her floors, stoves, dishes, linen,--- well, if they weren't clean, nowhere on earth might you find clean ones. She hated dirt as she did original sin, and I've no doubt but that in her own mind considered its existence in the world as the one certain, damning and conclusive evidence of the Fall. It was really an entertainment to see her looking about the house for a speck of dirt; and the cold-blooded manner in which she would seize upon it, bear it away in the dust pan, and, removing the lid of the stove, consign it to the flames, was--well,--what should I say,--yes, that's it--was most edifying.
Amiable! Yes,--after her way. And a very noiseless sort of way it was, too. For, though she had lived with the deacon for nearly a dozen years, he had never known her to so far forget her propriety as to indulge in anything more hearty and hilarious than the most decorous of smiles, which smile was such a kind of illumination to her face as a star of inconceivably small magnitude makes to the sky in trailing across it.
[Illustration: "_Miranda belonged to that sisterhood commonly known as spinsters._"]
Of her personal appearance I will say--nothing. Sacred let it be to memory! If you ever saw her, or one like her, whether full front or profile, whether sideways or edgewise, the vision, I am ready to swear, remains with you vividly still. Let it suffice, then, when I observe that Miss Miranda was not physically stout, and that the deacon's standing joke was by no means a bad one when he described her as "not actually burdened with fat." Yes, she was a very cleanly, very thin, very prudent, very particular person, that never joined in any sports or amusements; never joked or participated in any happy events in a happy, joyous fashion, but lived unobtrusively, and, I may say, coldly, in her own prim, cold, bloodless, little world.
"Gracious me!" exclaimed the deacon, as he looked at the package. "Gracious me! what has got into Mirandy?" And he looked scrutinizingly at the little, fine, thin, faintly-traced inscription on the package, as if the writer had begrudged the ink that must be expended on the letters, or from a subtle and mystic self-sympathy had made the chirography faint, delicate, and attenuated as her own self.
"Gracious me!" reiterated Deacon Tubman, as he proceeded to untie the knot in the pale blue ribbon smoothly bound around the package. "Who ever knew Mirandy to make a present before?" and the deacon was so surprised at what had taken place that, for a moment, he doubted the evidence of his own senses. "And put it in my boot, too, ha, ha!" And the deacon stopped undoing the parcel, and, lying back in the chair, roared at the thought of the prim, modest, particular Miranda perpetrating such a joke. And when the wrapping of the package was at last undone, for every corner and crease of it was as carefully turned and as sharply edged as if the smoothing iron had passed over them,--will wonders ever cease in this startling world of ours?--out dropped a night-cap! Yes, a night-cap, delicately and deftly crocheted in warm, woolen stuff of a rich cardinal color.
"Ha, ha," laughed the deacon, as he