"So we agreed to say nothin' about it, and all of us kept our promise
except Milly Amos. She had mighty little sense to begin with, and
havin' been married only about two months, she'd about lost that
little. So next mornin' I happened to meet Sam Amos, and he says to
me, 'Aunt Jane, how much money have you women got to'rds the new
cyarpet for the church?' I looked him square in the face, and I says,
'Are you a member of the Ladies' Mite Society of Goshen church, Sam
Amos? For if you are, you already know how much money we've got, and
if you ain't, you've got no business knowin'. And, furthermore,' says
I, 'there's some women that can't keep a secret and a promise, and
some that can, and _I_ can.' And that settled _him_.
"Well, 'Lizabeth never showed her face outside her door for more'n a
month afterwards, and a more pitiful-lookin' creatur' you never saw
than she was when she come out to prayer-meetin' the night Sally Ann
give her experience. She set 'way back in the church, and she was as
pale and peaked as if she had been through a siege of typhoid. I
ricollect it all as if it had been yesterday. We sung 'Sweet Hour of
Prayer,' and Parson Page prayed, and then called on the brethren to
say anything they might feel called on to say concernin' their
experience in the past week. Old Uncle Jim Matthews begun to clear his
throat, and I knew, as well as I knew my name, he was fixin' to git up
and tell how precious the Lord had been to his soul, jest like he'd
been doin' every Wednesday night for twenty years. But before he got
started, here come 'Lizabeth walkin' down the side aisle and stopped
right in front o' the pulpit.
"'I've somethin' to say,' she says. 'It's been on my mind till I can't
stand it any longer. I've got to tell it, or I'll go crazy. It was me
that took that cyarpet money. I only meant to borrow it. I thought
sure I'd be able to pay it back before it was wanted. But things went
wrong, and I ain't known a peaceful minute since, and never shall
again, I reckon. I took it to pay my way up to Louisville, the time I
got the news that Mary was dyin'.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account