while as for Mrs. Phelps, why, folks said she just starved to death.
Anyway, she died soon after Nathan was drowned. Just to show how pesky
mean the old Colonel was, Mr. Herrick, they tell how one night the women
folks was sewing in the sittin'-room. Seems they was workin' on some
mighty particular duds and Mrs. Phelps had lighted an extra candle; the
Colonel never would allow a lamp in his house. Well, there they was
sittin' with the two candles burnin' when in stomps the Colonel. 'Hey,'
says he, blowin' out one of the candles, 'what's all this blaze of
light? Want to ruin your eyes?

"Folks liked the Colonel, too, spite of his meanness. He was a great
church man, an' more'n half supported the Baptist church over there.
Seemed as if he was willin' to give money to the Lord an' no one else,
not even his own family. Mary was the first of the girls to get married,
she bein' the eldest. She married George Craig, from over Portsmouth
way, an'--"

"Craig? Then she was Ed's mother?" interrupted Wade.

"Yes. About a month after the engagement was given out the Colonel drew
up the plans of those two houses. He made the drawin's himself, and then
sot down an' figured out just how much they'd cost; so much for stone
an' masonry; so much for lumber and carpentry; so much for brick an' so
much for paint. Then he went to a carpenter over in Redding an' showed
him the plans with the figures writ on 'em an' asked him if he'd put up
the houses. The carpenter figured an' said he'd be switched if he'd do
it for any such price. So the Colonel he goes to another feller with
like results. They say most every carpenter between here an' Portsmouth
figured on those houses an' wouldn't have anything to do with them.
Then, finally, the Colonel found a man who'd just settled down in
Tottingham and opened a shop there. Came from Biddeford, Maine, I
believe, and thought he was pretty foxy. 'Well,' he says, 'there ain't
any money in it for me at those figures, Colonel, but work's slack an'
I'll take the contract.' You see, he thought he could charge a little
more here an' there an' make something. But he didn't know the Colonel.
Every time he'd talk about things costin' more than he'd thought the
Colonel would flash that contract on him. When the houses was finished
he sued the Colonel for a matter of four hundred dollars, but there was
the contract, plain as day, an' he lost his suit. Just about put him out
of business an' he had to move away. T