He Fell In Love With His Wife, Edward Payson Roe [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

your tasks with less clamor. My nerves are not equal to this peculiar

way of taking up and laying down things.”

 

“Vell, jes’ ye vait a minute, han hi’ll show ye ‘ow hi kin take hup things han

put ‘em down hag’in hout o’ my vay,” and before Mrs. Mumpson could interfere,

she found herself lifted, chair and all bodily, and carried to the parlor.

Between trepidation and anger, she could only gasp during the transit, and

when left in the middle of the parlor floor she looked around in utter

bewilderment.

 

It so happened that Holcroft, on his way from the barn, had seen Jane looking

in at the window, and, suspecting something amiss, had arrived just in time

for the spectacle. Convulsed with laughter, he returned hastily to the barn;

while Jane expressed her feelings, whatever they were, by executing something

like a hornpipe before the window.

 

Mrs. Mumpson, however, was not vanquished. She had only made a compulsory

retreat from the scene of hostilities; and, after rallying her shattered

faculties, advanced again with the chair. “How dared you, you disreputerble

female?” she began.

 

Mrs. Wiggins turned slowly and ominously upon her. “Ye call me a disrupterbul

female hag’in, han ye vont find hit ‘ealthy.”

 

Mrs. Mumpson prudently backed toward the door before delivering her return

fire.

 

“Woman!” she cried, “are you out of your mind? Don’t you know I’m housekeeper

here, and that it’s my duty to superintend you and your work?”

 

“Vell, then, hi’ll double ye hup hand put ye hon the shelf hof the dresser

han’ lock the glass door hon ye. From hup there ye kin see all that’s goin’

hon and sup’intend to yer ‘eart’s content,” and she started for her superior

officer.

 

Mrs. Mumpson backed so precipitately with her chair that it struck against the

door case, and she sat down hard. Seeing that Mrs. Wiggins was almost upon

her, she darted back into the parlor, leaving the chair as a trophy in the

hands of her enemy. Mrs. Wiggins was somewhat appeased by this second

triumph, and with the hope of adding gall and bitterness to Mrs. Mumpson’s

defeat, she took the chair to her rival’s favorite rocking place, lighted her

pipe, and sat down in grim complacency. Mrs. Mumpson warily approached to

recover a support which, from long habit, had become moral as well as

physical, and her indignation knew no bounds when she saw it creaking under

the weight of her foe. It must be admitted, however, that her ire was not so

great that she did not retain the “better part of valor,” for she stepped

back, unlocked the front door, and set it ajar. On returning, she opened with

a volubility that awed even Mrs. Wiggins for a moment. “You miserable,

mountainous pauper; you interloper; you unrefined, irresponserble,

unregenerate female, do you know what you have done in thus outraging ME? I’m

a respecterble woman, respecterbly connected. I’m here in a responserble

station. When Mr. Holcroft appears he’ll drive you from the dwelling which

you vulgarize. Your presence makes this apartment a den. You are a wild

beast—”

 

“Hi’m a vile beastes, ham hi?” cried Mrs. Wiggins, at last stung into action,

and she threw her lighted pipe at the open mouth that was discharging

high-sounding epithets by the score.

 

It struck the lintel over the widow’s head, was shattered, and sent down upon

her a shower of villainously smelling sparks. Mrs. Mumpson shrieked and

sought frantically to keep her calico wrapper from taking fire. Meanwhile,

Mrs. Wiggins rose and took a step or two that she might assist should there be

any positive danger, for she had not yet reached a point of malignity which

would lead her to witness calmly an auto-da-fe. This was Jane’s opportunity.

Mrs. Wiggins had alienated this small and hitherto friendly power, and now,

with a returning impulse of loyalty, it took sides with the weaker party. The

kitchen door was on a crack; the child pushed it noiselessly open, darted

around behind the stove, and withdrew the rocking chair.

 

Mrs. Wiggins’ brief anxiety and preoccupation passed, and she stepped backward

again to sit down. She did sit down, but with such terrific force that the

stove and nearly everything else in the room threatened to fall with her. She

sat helplessly for a bewildered moment, while Jane, with the chair, danced

before her exclaiming, tauntingly, “That’s for chasing me out as if I was a

cat!”

 

“Noo hi’ll chase ye both hout,” cried the ireful Wiggins, scrambling to her

feet. She made good her threat, for Holcroft, a moment later, saw mother and

daughter, the latter carrying the chair, rushing from the front door, and Mrs.

Wiggins, armed with a great wooden spoon, waddling after them, her

objurgations mingling with Mrs. Mumpson’s shrieks and Jane’s shrill laughter.

The widow caught a glimpse of him standing in the barn door, and, as if borne

by the wind, she flew toward him, crying, “He shall be my protector!”

 

He barely had time to whisk through a side door and close it after him. The

widow’s impetuous desire to pant out the story of her wrongs carried her into

the midst of the barnyard, where she was speedily confronted by an unruly

young heifer that could scarcely be blamed for hostility to such a

wild-looking object.

 

The animal shook its head threateningly as it advanced. Again the widow’s

shrieks resounded. This time Holcroft was about to come to the rescue, when

the beleaguered woman made a dash for the top of the nearest fence, reminding

her amused looker-on of the night of her arrival when she had perched like

some strange sort of bird on the wagon wheel.

 

Seeing that she was abundantly able to escape alone, the farmer remained in

concealment. Although disgusted and angry at the scenes taking place, he was

scarcely able to restrain roars of laughter. Perched upon the fence, the

widow called piteously for him to lift her down, but he was not to be caught

by any such device. At last, giving up hope and still threatened by the

heifer, she went over on the other side. Knowing that she must make a detour

before reaching the dwelling, Holcroft went thither rapidly with the purpose

of restoring order at once. “Jane,” he said sternly, “take that chair to the

parlor and leave it there. Let there be no more such nonsense.”

 

At his approach, Mrs. Wiggins had retreated sullenly to the kitchen. “Come,”

he ordered good-naturedly, “hasten breakfast and let there be no more

quarreling.”

 

“Hif hi vas left to do me work hin peace—” she began.

 

“Well, you shall do it in peace.”

 

At this moment Mrs. Mumpson came tearing in, quite oblivious of the fact that

she had left a goodly part of her calico skirt on a nail of the fence. She

was rushing toward Holcroft, when he said sternly, and with a repellent

gesture, “Stop and listen to me. If there’s any more of this quarreling like

cats and dogs in my house, I’ll send for the constable and have you all

arrested. If you are not all utterly demented and hopeless fools, you will

know that you came here to do my work, and nothing else.” Then catching a

glimpse of Mrs. Mumpson’s dress, and fearing he should laugh outright, he

turned abruptly on his heel and went to his room, where he was in a divided

state between irrepressible mirth and vexation.

 

Mrs. Mumpson also fled to her room. She felt that the proper course for her

at this juncture was a fit of violent hysterics; but a prompt douche from the

water pitcher, administered by the unsympathetic Jane, effectually checked the

first symptoms. “Was ever a respecterble woman—”

 

“You aint respectable,” interrupted the girl, as she departed. “You look like

a scarecrow. ‘Fi’s you I’d begin to show some sense now.”

 

Chapter XV. “What is to Become of Me?”

 

Holcroft’s reference to a constable and arrest, though scarcely intended to be

more than a vague threat, had the effect of clearing the air like a clap of

thunder. Jane had never lost her senses, such as she possessed, and Mrs.

Wiggins recovered hers sufficiently to apologize to the farmer when he came

down to breakfast. “But that Mumpson’s hawfully haggravatin’, master, as ye

know yeself, hi’m a-thinkin’. Vud ye jis tell a body vat she is ‘here, han

‘ow hi’m to get hon vith ‘er. Hif hi’m to take me horders from ‘er, hi’d

ruther go back to the poor-‘us.”

 

“You are to take your orders from me and no one else. All I ask is that you

go on quietly with your work and pay no attention to her. You know well

enough that I can’t have such goings on. I want you to let Jane help you and

learn her to do everything as far as she can. Mrs. Mumpson can do the mending

and ironing, I suppose. At any rate, I won’t have any more quarreling and

uproar. I’m a quiet man and intend to have a quiet house. You and Jane can

get along very well in the kitchen, and you say you understand the dairy

work.”

 

“Vell hi does, han noo hi’ve got me horders hi’ll go right along.”

 

Mrs. Mumpson was like one who had been rudely shaken out of a dream, and she

appeared to have sense enough to realize that she couldn’t assume so much at

first as she anticipated. She received from Jane a cup of coffee, and said

feebly, “I can partake of no more after the recent trying events.”

 

For some hours she was a little dazed, but her mind was of too light weight to

be long cast down. Jane rehearsed Holcroft’s words, described his manner, and

sought with much insistence to show her mother that she must drop her nonsense

at once. “I can see it in his eye,” said the girl, “that he won’t stand much

more. If yer don’t come down and keep yer hands busy and yer tongue still,

we’ll tramp. As to his marrying you, bah! He’d jes’ as soon marry Mrs.

Wiggins.”

 

This was awful prose, but Mrs. Mumpson was too bewildered and discouraged for

a time to dispute it, and the household fell into a somewhat regular routine.

The widow appeared at her meals with the air of a meek and suffering martyr;

Holcroft was exceedingly brief in his replies to her questions, and paid no

heed to her remarks. After supper and his evening work, he went directly to

his room. Every day, however, he secretly chafed with ever-increasing

discontent, over this tormenting presence in his house. The mending and such

work as she attempted was so wretchedly performed that it would better have

been left undone. She was also recovering her garrulousness, and mistook his

toleration and her immunity in the parlor for proof of a growing

consideration. “He knows that my hands were never made for such coarse, menial

tasks as that Viggins does,” she thought, as she darned one of his stockings

in a way that would render it almost impossible for him to put his foot into

it again. “The events of last Monday morning were unfortunate, unforeseen,

unprecedented. I was unprepared for such vulgar, barbarous, unheard-of

proceedings—taken off my feet, as it were; but now that he’s had time to

think it all over, he sees that I am not a common woman like Viggins,”—Mrs.

Mumpson would have suffered rather than have accorded her enemy the prefix of

Mrs.,—“who is only fit to be among pots and kettles. He leaves me in the

parlor as if a refined apartment became me and I became it. Time and my

influence will mellow, soften, elevate, develop, and at last