Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/51

 one else can hear or see, and, oh! I can't tell you what they don't do. The neighbors are called in; but no one can do any thing with them. They call them 'the afflicted children.'

"Well, we were talking of it at the table. 'Afflicted children! indeed!—afflicted fiddlesticks, I say,' quoth Goody Nurse; 'I don't believe a word of it; I believe it's all shamming. If either of my little maids had trained on so at their age, I guess I would have afflicted them with the end of my broomstick. I would have whipped it out of them, I know. They have been left to go with them pagan slaves,' she says, 'till their heads are half cracked; and Parson Parris, he just allows and encourages it. If he'd box their ears for them, all round, three times a day, I guess it would cure them,' says she.

"Then Thomas Preston spoke up, and he says: 'I think, Goody, you are too hard on the children. Maybe, if you had seen them, you would feel differently. I have, and it is just awful to behold their fits; and I believe every word of it.'