Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/199

 One Summer. A Reininiscence.

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��came : I guess they had a tough battle. Folks said they never heard such screams, and in the morning his legs and arms was found scattered all over the cowyard."

I recognized in this tragic story, Marlowe's Faustus. I was much amused at Lucy's rendering.

A few weeks afterwards she told me how the house where she lived was haunted. I asked her, "Who haunts it?"

" Why ! " she said, " it 's a woman. She walks up and down them old stairs, dressed in white, looking so sorrowful- like, I know there must have been foul play. And then such noises as we hear overhead ! My man says that it 's rats. Rats ! I know better ! "

I thought that Lucy wanted to believe in ghosts, so I did n't try to reason with her, —

" For a man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still."

Lucy was quite an old woman ; and I used to think that washing was too hard work for her ; but she seemed very happy. All the while she was rubbing the clothes over the wooden washboard, or wringing them out with her hands, she would be singing old - fashioned songs, such as Jimmy and Nancy, Auld Robin Gray, and an- other one beginning '-'In Springfield mountain there did dwell." It was very sad !

These songs were chanted, all in one tune. If the words had not been quaint, and suggestive of a century or more ago, I think the entertainment would have been monotonous.

Lucy brought the news of the neigh- borhood. One morning she came in, and said : "John King's folks thinks an awful sight of themselves, sence Calline has been off. She has sot herself up

��marsterly. They have gone to work now and painted all the trays and paint- kags they can find red, and filled them with one thing another, and sot them round the house. No good will come of that ! When you see every, thing painted red, look out for war; it's a

��sure sign.

��One evening late in summer, when I came in from a walk through the fields, I found in the back porch all the implements for cheese-making. Mrs. Wetherell said : " It 's too warm to make butter, now dog-days have come in, so I am going to make cheese."

That night all the milk was strained into the large tub. The next morning this milk was stirred and the morning's milk strained into it. Then Mrs. Wetherell warmed a kettleful and poured into the tub, and tried it with her finger to see if it was warm enough. She said : " My rennet is rather weak, so I have to use considerable."

After she had turned the rennet in, she laid the cheese-tongs across the tub, and spread a homespun tablecloth over it, and looking up to me, she said : " In an hour or so that \vill come."

I made it my business, when the hour was out, to be back in the porch. Mrs. Wetherell was stirring up the thick white curd, and dipping out the pale green whey, with a little wooden dish. After she had " weighed it, " she mixed in salt thoroughly. She asked me to hand her her cheese-hoop and cloth, which were lying on the table behind me. She put one end of the cloth into the hoop and commenced filling it with curd, pressing it down with her hand. When it was nearly full she slipped up the hoop a little : " to give it a chance to press," she said. After this, she put the cheese bet\veen two cheese-boards, in the press, and

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