sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The

widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the

table you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck

down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really

anything the matter with them,—that is, nothing only everything was cooked by

itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and

the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

 

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers,

and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by-and-by she let it out

that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more

about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.

 

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t.

She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it

any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when

they don’t know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which

was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a

power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took

snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.

 

Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just

come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked

me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I

couldn’t stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was