"
"Come, Rachel, this is unreasonable," said her brother. "(sic)
Noboby begrudges you what you eat, even if you choose to eat twice
as much as you do. I dare say, Jack ate more of them than you did."
"I ate six," said Jack.
Rachel, construing this into an apology, said no more; but, feeling
it unnecessary to explain why she ate what she admitted to be
unhealthy, added, "And if I do eat what's unwholesome, it's because
life ain't of any value to me. The sooner one gets out of this vale
of affliction the better."
"And the way you take to get out of it," said Jack, gravely, "is by
eating apple-turnovers. Whenever you die, Aunt Rachel, we shall have
to put a paragraph in the papers, headed, 'Suicide by eating
apple-turnovers.'"
Rachel intimated, in reply, that she presumed it would afford Jack a
great deal of satisfaction to write such a paragraph.
The evening came. Still no tidings of Ida.
The family began to feel alarmed. An indefinable sense of
apprehension oppressed the minds of all. Mrs. Crump feared that
Ida's mother, seeing her grown up so attractive, could not resist
the temptation of keeping her.
"I suppose," she said, "that she has the best claim to her; but it
will be a terrible thing for us to part with her."
"Don't let us trouble ourselves in that way," said the cooper. "It
seems to me very natural that they should keep her a little longer
than they intended.
Pages:
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83