Land! the
way that girl would sing when she had got a letter from
home, the queerest songs ye ever heard:
Down by the biller there grew a green willer,
Weeping all night with the bank for a piller.
Well, I had to stop her at last," Mrs. Motherwell would
tell you with an apologetic swallow, which showed that
even generous people have to be firm sometimes in the
discharge of unpleasant duties.
"And, mind you," Mrs. Motherwell would go on, with a
grieved air, "just as the busy time came on didn't she
up and take the fever--you never can depend on them
English girls--and when the doctor was outside there in
the buggy waitin' for her--he took her to the hospital--I
declare if we didn't find her blubberin' over them poppies,
and not a flower on them no mor'n nothing."
Sam Motherwell and his wife were nominally Presbyterians.
At the time that the Millford Presbyterian Church was
built Sam had given twenty-five dollars toward it, the
money having been secured in some strange way by the
wiles of Purvis Thomas, the collector. Everybody was
surprised at Sam's prodigality. The next year, a new
collector--for Purvis Thomas had gone away--called on
Mr. Motherwell.
The grain was just beginning to show a slight tinge of
gold. It was one of those cloudless sunshiny days in the
beginning of August, when a faint blue haze lies on the
Tiger Hills, and the joy of being alive swells in the
breast of every living thing.
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