236 A New England Village Quilting Party in the Olden Times.
��bles of their friends and neighbors. Housework was the order of the day, and hence the improvement of the mind was almost of necessity neglected. Hence, too, the general tendency ( for the less one knows, the more one loves to keep the tongue in motion), to in- dulge in idle talk and gossiping. So, as the busy needles pierce the quilt, the busy tongues, sharp as the needles, pierce the characters of the absent.
" Do you really think," says Tabitha Pinchbeck in a low undertone to Han- nah Blair, " that our minister ever had that queer dream he told, about our singers and the angels? "
" No, never," replies Miss Blair in a whisper, " never ! He 's a droll sort of a minister, isn't he, Tabitha? I wish we had a younger man, don 't you? "
"To be sure I do," returns Miss Pinchbeck, a venerable spinster with a Vandyke handkerchief and a pair of silver-bowed spectacles ; " but how shall we get rid of him ? He 's settled for life, you know."
" But he says," interposes Molly Mansfield, who, on stopping to thread her needle, overhears the conversation, " his people will be glad enough when he 's dead and gone, and I 'm sure I shall."
" O, you wretch," exclaims Mrs. Rackett whose grey curls peer profusely from beneath her white muslin cap ; " you wish him dead and gone, do you ? What if he should hear of that, Molly ? But that old beaver hat he wears is shocking, isn't it? "
" Shocking ! " responded Hannah Blair, " and in that old, faded camlet cloak he looks like a scarecrow."
" What long and tedious prayers lie makes ! " says Mrs. Rackett.
" He never calls on anybody," adds Molly Mansfield, " and how dull his sermons are ; my father says they are
��always personal, and that he never writes a new one."
" His hands are blistered digging his potatoes ; how can he write a new one ? " sarcastically chimes in Mrs. Rackett.
" I never listen to them," interposes in a high-keyed voice Aunt Tabitha Pinchbeck.
" How proud he is of his new chaise," says Mrs. Rugby, stopping to play a moment with the string of golden beads around her neck ; " I wonder if I shall ever get a ride in it? "
" He said the other day," interjects Molly Mansfield, " the town had treated him worse than they did the pirate down at the castle in Boston Harbor,"
" Well, he deserves it," cry out sev- eral sharp voices.
" But he is kind to the poor," mod- estly observes Miss Angeline Hartwell, a young lady in deep mourning, whose widowed mother had not been forgot- ten in the distribution of the charities of Mr. Baxter.
" What if he is? " pertly replies Miss Pinchbeck, whose father had wrung his money from the sinews of the poor ; " he does it all for show ; he's as tight as the bark of a tree, and his wife is tighter still."
"Yes, girls," flings in Mrs. Rugby, shyly, " and they say he's sometimes tight another way ! "
" He's a Whig too," says Mrs. Rackett, " and my husband hates him for that."
" I don't like him," cries Tabitha Pinchbeck, " for his ugly face."
" I don't like him," responds Molly Mansfield, " for his whining voice."
" I don't like him," adds Hamiah Blair, " for his awkward gait,"
" I don't like him," echoes Mrs. Rugby, " for his hypocrisy."
" I don't like him," blurts out Mrs. Rackett, spitefully, " for his intermed- dhng with our dancing."
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