Deephaven and Selected Stories & SketchesJewett, Sarah Orne
General
Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches
Jewett, Sarah Orne
Maine -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
you know, but they used to tell me about it. Folks used to call him Miss
Dan'el Gunn.
"He'd been that way some time when I went over. I'd heard about his
notions, and I was scared of him at first, but I found out there wasn't
no need. Don't you know I was sort o' 'fraid to go, 'Lizabeth, when
Cousin Statiry sent for me after she went home from that visit she made
here? She'd told us about him, but sometimes, 'long at the first of it,
he used to be cross. He never was after I went there. He was a clever,
kind-hearted man, if ever there was one," said Aunt Polly, with
decision. "He used to go down to the corner to the store sometimes in
the morning, and he would see to business. And before he got feeble
sometimes he would work out on the farm all the morning, stiddy as any
of the men; but after he come in to dinner he would take off his coat,
if he had it on, and fall asleep in his arm-chair, or on a l'unge there
was in his bedroom, and when he waked up he would be sort of bewildered
for a while, and then he'd step round quick's he could, and get his
dress out o' the clothes-press, and the cap, and put 'em on right over
the rest of his clothes. He was always small-featured and smooth-shaved,
and I don' know as, to come in sudden, you would have thought he was a
man, except his hair stood up short and straight all on the top of his
head, as men-folks had a fashion o' combing their hair then, and I must
say he did make a dreadful ordinary-looking woman. The neighbors got
used to his ways, and, land! I never thought nothing of it after the
first week or two.
"His sister's clothes that he wore first was too small for him, and so
my cousin Statiry, that kep' his house, she made him a linsey-woolsey
dress with a considerable short skirt, and he was dreadful pleased with
it, she said, because the other one never would button over good, and
showed his wais'coat, and she and I used to make him caps; he used to
wear the kind all the old women did then, with a big crown, and close
round the face. I've got some laid away up-stairs now that was my
mother's--she wore caps very young, mother did. His nephew that lived
with him carried on the farm, and managed the business, but he always
treated the cap'n as if he was head of everything there. Everybody
pitied the cap'n; folks respected him; but you couldn't help laughing,
to save ye. We used to try to keep him in, afternoons, but we couldn't
always."
"Tell her about that day he went to meeting," said Mrs. Snow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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