Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/122

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SKETCH OF CONNECTICUT,

coverlet. It would save Beulah some labour, who prides herself on the whiteness of the floor, which she daily scours."

Thus assured, he made one or two strides towards a chair which she placed for him, walking on tiptoe, and murmuring with some regret, as he rested his heels upon the hearth,—

"Your ha-ath too, is as clean as a cheeny tea-cup, Ma'am. I hate to put my coarse huffs on it. But I ha'nt been used to seein' kiverlids spread on the floor to walk on. We are glad to get 'em to kiver us up with a nights. This looks like a boughten one," he added, examining the figure, and feeling its texture. "'Tis exceedin curous. They must have had a pretty many treadles in the loom, that wove this."

The Lady remarked that the use of carpets, like other luxuries, was gaining ground too rapidly among those who were often deficient in real comfort." Silks and satins put out the kitchen-fire, as a wise man has said."

"Ay, Ma'am, he answered, just so I tell my young gals, when they get a teasin' their mammy, for somethin fine; and gay. See to your under-riggin', I tell 'em, and keep yourselves whole and neat. It's as much as I can do, to get along, says I, in any comfortable kind of a way with such a snarl on ye. And if there was'nt so many, says I, and I was a monied man, ye should not go a flauntin' around with your top-knots, for there's no use in 'em, but to make young folks vain, and silly ones stare, If ye larn