Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/41

 over their sun-flushed cheeks. "Why, Susie, you look like a pickled beet in your face. Set down, child, an cool off. Grandma called you an' Eddie down to tell you an old-timey story."

There was an outbreak of delighted cries from the children and Mrs. Pritchard said deprecatingly, "You know, Abby, there never was children yet that wasn't crazy bout old-timey stories. I remember how I used to hang onto Aunt Debby's skirts and beg her to tell me some more.

"The story I'm goin to tell you is about this Great-aunt Debby," she announced formally to her auditors, "when she was 'bout fourteen years old and lived up here in this very house, pretty soon after th' Rev'lution. There was only just a field or two cleared off round it then, and all over th' mounting the woods were as black as any cellar with pines and spruce. Great-aunt Debby was the oldest one of five children and my grandfather—your great-great-grandfather—was the youngest. In them days there wa'n't but a few families in the valley and they lived far apart, so when Great-aunt Debby's father got awful sick a few days after he'd been away to get some grist ground, Aunt Debby's mother had to send her 'bout six miles through th' woods to the nearest house—it stood where the old Perkins barn is now. The man come back with Debby, but as soon as he saw great-grandfather he give one yell—'smallpox!'—and lit out for home. Folks was tur'ble afraid of it then an' he had seven children of his own an' nobody for 'em to look to if he died, so you couldn't blame him none. They was all like that then, every fam'ly just barely holdin' on, an' scratchin for dear life.