Says I, 'Father, you know you'll be down with the rheumatis for this;
besides, Beulah is real aggravatin'. I know she trades off what we send
her to the store for rum, and you never get no thanks. She 'xpects,
'cause we has done for her, we always must; and more we do, more we may
do.' And says he to me, says he, 'That's jest the way we sarves the
Lord, Polly; and what if He shouldn't hear us when we call on Him in
our troubles?' So I shet up; and the next day he was down with the
rheumatis. And Cerinthy Ann, says she, 'Well, father, _now_ I hope
you'll own you have got _some_ disinterested benevolence,' says she;
and the Deacon he thought it over a spell, and then he says, 'I'm
'fraid it's all selfish. I'm jest a-makin' a righteousness of it.' And
Cerinthy Ann she come out, declarin' that the best folks never had no
comfort in religion; and for her part she didn't mean to trouble her
head about it, but have jest as good a time as she could while she's
young, 'cause if she was 'lected to be saved she should be, and if she
wa'n't she couldn't help it, any how."
"Mr. Brown says he came onto Dr. H.'s ground years ago," said Mrs.
Brown, giving a nervous twitch to her yarn, and speaking in a sharp,
hard, didactic voice, which made little Mrs.
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