I told him it wa'n't cribs as was the question, but
clothes-poles, an' I might of spoken some stronger, but just then he
stepped on the edge of the cistern cover 'n' I got such a turn as drove
everythin' else clean out o' my mind. You know how easy it is to turn
that cover, Mrs. Lathrop, 'n' I must say that if he and it had fell in
together there'd have been a fine tale to tell, for the cover always
sinks straight to the bottom, 'n' is no joke to find 'n' fish up,--you
and I both know that. Ever since the brace give way I 've always got it
on my mind to keep the clothes-bars sittin' over it, but now the brace
in the clothes-bars is give way too 'n' as a consequence they won't sit
over nothin' no more. If money was looser I 'd certainly never spare it
gettin' them two braces mended, but money bein' tight and me alone in
the house 'n' the most of my callers them as it 's all one to me whether
I see 'em in the parlor or in the cistern, I ain't botherin'. I was
never one to worry an' scurry unnecessarily, Mrs. Lathrop, an' you know
that as well as I do, 'n' to-day I had my mind all done up in my
curtains anyway, 'n' I was more'n' a little put out over bein'
interrupted, even by a man as come in through the woodshed door, that I
never bolt 'cause it 's a understood thing as woodshed doors is not to
be come in at. The turn he give me when I hear him clutterin' aroun' in
the woodshed!--I thought he was rats, an' then a cat, an' then a rat an'
a cat come together, an' then all of a sudden I see him an' remembered
the cistern cover.
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