'n' rocked back 'n' forth for ten year, till he wore out
five cane-bottomed cheers, 'n' then rocked clean through, down cellar,
all on account o' Crany Ann Sweat. Well, I hope she got her comeuppance
in another world,--she never did in this; she married well 'n' lived in
Boston.... Mis' Thatcher hopes Seth 'll come home to live. She's dretful
lonesome in that big house, all alone. She'd oughter have somebody for a
company-keeper. She can't see nothin' but trees 'n' cows from her
winders.... Beats all, the places they used to put houses.... Either
they'd get 'em right under foot so 't you'd most tread on 'em when you
walked along the road, or else they'd set 'em clean back in a lane,
where the women folks couldn't see face o' clay week in 'n' week out....

"Joel Whitten's widder's just drawed his pension along o' his bein' in
the war o' 1812. ... It's took 'em all these years to fix it. ... Massy
sakes! don't some folks have their luck buttered in this world?... She
was his fourth wife, 'n' she never lived with him but thirteen days
'fore he up 'n' died. ... It doos seem's if the guv'ment might look
after things a little mite closer.... Talk about Joel Whitten's bein' in
the war o' 1812! Everybody knows Joel Whitten wouldn't have fit a
skeeter! He never got any further 'n Scratch Corner, any way, 'n' there
he clim a tree or hid behind a hen-coop somewheres till the regiment got
out o' sight.... Yes: one, two, three, four,--Huldy was his fourth wife.
His first was a Hogg, from Hoggses Mills. The second was Dorcas
Doolittle, aunt to Jabe Slocum; she didn't know enough to make soap,
Dorcas didn't.... Then there was Delia Weeks, from the lower corner....
She didn't live long.... There was some thin' wrong with Delia.... She
was one o' the thin-blooded, white-livered kind.... You couldn't get her
warm, no matter how hard you tried. ... She'd set over a roarin' fire in
the cook-stove even in the prickliest o' the dog-days. ... The
mill-folks used to say the Whittens burnt more cut-roun's 'n' stickens
'n any three fam'lies in the village. ... Well, after Delia died, then
come Huldy's turn, 'n' it's she, after all, that's drawed the
pension.... Huldy took Joel's death consid'able hard, but I guess she'll
perk up, now she's come int' this money. ... She's awful leaky-minded,
Huldy is, but she's got tender feelin's.... One day she happened in at
noon-time, 'n' set down to the table with Si 'n' I.... All of a suddent
she bust right