yrus
Robinson, and told him to ask him if he'd got some extra shoes to
bind and close, and he come home with some. Elmira and me bound, and
Jerome closed, and we took our pay in groceries. The shoes have fed
us, with what we got out of the garden. Then Elmira and me have
braided mats and pieced quilts and sewed three rag carpets, and
Elmira picked huckleberries and blackberries in season, and sold them
to your wife and Miss Camilla and the doctor's wife; and Lawyer Means
bought lots of her, and the woman that keeps house for John Jennings
bought a lot. Elmira picked bayberries, too, and sold 'em to the
shoemaker for tallow; she sold a lot in Dale. Elmira did a good deal
of the weeding in your sister's garden, so's to leave Jerome's time
clear. Then once when the doctor's wife had company she went over to
help wash dishes, and she give her three an' sixpence for that.
Elmira said she give it dreadful kind of private, and looked round to
be sure the doctor wa'n't within gunshot. She give her a red merino
dress of hers, too, but she kept her till after nightfall, and
smuggled her out of the back door, with it all done up under her arm,
lest the doctor should see. They say she's got dresses she won't
never put on her back again--silks an' satins an' woollens--because
she's outgrown 'em, an' they're all hangin' up in closets gettin'
mothy, an' the doctor won't let her give 'em away. But this dress she
give Elmira wa'n't give away, for I sent her back next day to do some
extra work to pay for it. I ain't beholden to nobody. Elmira swept
and dusted the settin'-room and the spare chamber, and washed the
breakfast an' dinner dishes, and I guess she paid for that old dress
ample. It had been laid up with camphor in a cedar chest, but it had
some moth holes in it. It wa'n't worth such a great sight, after all.

"Jerome he's worked smart, if I have had to drive him to it
sometimes. He's wed and dug potatoes everywhere he could git a
chance; he's helped 'bout hayin', an' he's split wood. He's sold some
herbs and roots, too, over to Dale. Jake Noyes he put him up to that.
He come in here one night an' talked to him real sensible. 'There's
money 'nough layin' round loose right under your face an' eyes,' says
he; 'all the trouble is you're apt to walk right past, with your nose
up in the air. The scent for work an' wages ain't up in the air,'
says he; 'it's on the ground.' Jerome he listened real sharp, an'
the next day he went off a