"Hullo, Mother! Got back, hev yeh?"
"I sh'd say it was about time," she replied briefly with-out looking
up or ceasing work. "Has ol' 'Cruuipy' dried up yit?" This was her
greeting.
Her trip was a fact now; no chance could rob her of it. She had
looked forward twenty-three years toward it, and now she could
look back at it accomplished. She took up her burden again, never
more thinking to lay it down.
UNCLE ETHAN RIPLEY
"Like the Main-Travelled Road of Life, it is traversed by many
classes of people."
UNCLE ETHAN had a theory that a man's character could be told
by the way he sat in a wagon seat.
"A mean man sets right plumb in the middle o' the seat, as much as
to say, 'Walk, goldarn yeh, who cares!' But a man that sets in the
corner o' the seat, much as to say, 'Jump in-cheaper t' ride 'n to
walk,' you can jest tie to."
Uncle Ripley was prejudiced in favor of the stranger, therefore,
before he came opposite the potato patch, where the old man was
"bugging his vines." The stranger drove a jaded-looking pair of
calico ponies, hitched to a clattering democrat wagon, and he sat
on the extreme end of the seat, with the lines in his right hand,
while his left rested on his thigh, with his little finger gracefully
crooked and his elbows akimbo.
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