“Well,” said Mrs. Bulkley, “she done it somehow. But I must tell you a queer sort of thing about when she was sick--yet it jest shows you what dummed fools women be. Mrs. Worden had the most amazin’ head of hair I ever seen in my born days, as black as jet and hangin’ to a length I darsen’t name, for fear you’d think it lies, and thick! good mercy! Well, she was in for a long sickness, the doctor said, and no nurse could do anything with that mop of hern; and so they ups and cuts it off, and mother cryin’ like a baby when they done it. But when she found out herself what they had done to her--good Lord! she give a screech, and wrung her hands and sobbed: ‘It was the only thing that Philip ever loved about me. He called it his great, black mantle, and once he wound it round and round and round his strong, white throat, and now _it’s_ gone; thanks to these meddlin’ fools, who don’t see that I can’t die!’ and she jest cursed every man and woman in the house, and raved over that hair of hern every hour when she was out of her head--when she was right-minded she never let on she noticed about it. Well, at last she got well, and straight she put on the widow’s weeds that she’s worn for five and fifty years. Poor soul! she held her head so high and looked so hard right into folks’s eyes, they darsen’t ask the questions nor make the remarks they’d like to. And she used to spend an awful lot of time and money on the poor--and she jest guarded them children as though they was chuck full of dimonds. But ’twas _then_ she began to use the sharp edge of her tongue. She didn’t talk _about_ folks, she never was one for slander, but the things she’d say _to_ ’em was jest awful, and the worst of it all was, that she always told the truth. If she’d jest been abusive and have made up things outen whole cloth, nobody would ’a cared much; but what was it, now, that big lawyer said about her once? Let’s see, she had been giving him a hidin’ right before folks, and when she was done, he says, ‘The woman who is armed with sarcasm and truth is a woman whose tongue is sharp on both edges.’ Yes, them’s the words.