on the mantelpiece. Everything where she was
had, she said, to "stand just so;" and woe to the child who carried
crookedness into her straight lines! Betsy had a manner of her own, and
made a wonderful kind of a courtesy, with which her skirts puffed out
all around like a cheese. She always courtesied to Parson Meeker when
she met him, and said: "I hope to see you well, sir." Once she
courtesied in a prayer-meeting to a man who offered her a chair, and
told him, in a shrill voice, to "keep his setting," though she was "ever
so much obleeged" to him. This was when she was under conviction, and
Parson Meeker said he thought she had met with a change of heart. Father
Lathem's wife hoped so too, for then "there would be a chance of having
some Long-noses and Pudding-sweets left over in the orchard."

It was in time of the long drought, when fire ran over Grayface, and a
great comet appeared in the sky. Some of the people of Whitefield
thought the world was coming to an end. The comet stayed for weeks,
visible even at noon-day, stretching its tail from the zenith far toward
the western horizon, and at night staring in at windows with its eye of
fire. It was the talk of the people, who pondered over it with a
helpless wonder. I recall two Whitefield women as they stood, one
morning, bare-armed in a doorway, staring at and chattering about it.
One says they "might as well stop work" and "take it easy" while they
can. The other thinks the better way is to "keep on a stiddy jog until
it comes." They wish they knew "how near it is," and "what the tail
means anyway."

Betsy comes along with a pail, which she sets down, and then looks up to
the comet. The air is dense with smoke from Grayface, and the dry earth
is full of cracks. Betsy declares that it is "going on two months since
there has been any rain." Everything is "going to wrack and ruin," and
"if that thing up there should burst, there'll be an end to Whitefield."

Then she catches sight of me listening wide-mouthed, and she tells me
that I needn't suppose she is "going home to iron my pink muslin," for
she thinks the tail of the comet "has started, and is coming right down
to whisk it off from the line." I believe her, and distinctly remember
the terror that took hold of me as I rushed home and tore the pink
muslin from the line, lest it should be whisked off by the comet's tail.

When the drought broke, a single day's rain washed all the smoke from
the air. Directly,