uded to make it plain, and sent the ruffle money.

And young Sister Serena Nott had picked geese for her sister, who
married a farmer up in Zoar. She had picked ten geese at two cents
apiece, and Serena that tender-hearted that it wuz like pickin' the
feathers offen her own back.

[Illustration: "SHE HAD PICKED TEN GEESE AT TWO CENTS APIECE."]

And then she is very timid, and skairt easy, and she owned up that while
the pickin' of the geese almost broke her heart, the pickin' of the
ganders almost skairt her to death. They wuz very high headed and
warlike, and though she put a stockin' over their heads, they would lift
'em right up, stockin' and all, and hiss, and act, and she said she
picked 'em at what seemed to her to be at the resk of her life.

But she loved the meetin' house, so she grin and bore it, as the sayin'
is, and she brung the hull of her hard earned money, and handed it over
to the treasurer, and everybody that is at all educated knows that twice
ten is twenty. She brung twenty cents.

Sister Grimshaw had, and she owned it right out and out, got four
dollars and fifty-three cents by sellin' butter on the sly. She had took
it out of the butter tub when Brother Grimshaw's back wuz turned, and
sold it to the neighbors for money at odd times through the year, and
besides gettin' her a dress cap (for which she wuz fairly sufferin'),
she gin the hull to the meetin' house.

There wuz quite dubersome looks all round the room when she handed in
the money and went right out, for she had a errent to the store.

And Sister Gowdy spoke up and said she didn't exactly like to use money
got in that way.

But Sister Lanfear sprunted up, and brung Jacob right into the argument,
and the Isrealites who borrowed jewelry of the Egyptians, and then she
brung up other old Bible characters, and held 'em up before us.

But still we some on us felt dubersome. And then another sister spoke up
and said the hull property belonged to Sister Grimshaw, every mite of
it, for he wuzn't worth a cent when he married her--she wuz the widder
Bettenger, and had a fine property. And Grimshaw hadn't begun to earn
what he had spent sense (he drinks). So, sez she, it all belongs to
Sister Grimshaw, by right.

Then the sisters all begin to look less dubersome. But I sez:

"Why don't she come out openly and take the money she wants for her own
use, and for church work, and charity?"

"Because he is so hard with her," sez Sister Lanfear,