American fiction -- 19th century; Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
course, however, was pleasingly indicated by vegetables that strewed
the road until she was at last tracked to the veranda of the Arcade
saloon, where she was found looking through the window at a game of
euchre, and only deterred by the impeding cart from entering the
building. A visit one Sunday to the little Catholic chapel at French
Camp, where she attempted to introduce an antiphonal service and the
cart, brought shame and disgrace upon her unlucky master. For the cart
contained freshly-gathered vegetables, and the fact that McCarty had
been Sabbath-breaking was painfully evident. Father Sullivan was quick
to turn an incident that provoked only the risibilities of his audience
into a moral lesson. "It's the poor dumb beast that has a more
Christian sowl than Michael," he commented; but here Jinny assented so
positively that they were fain to drag her away by main force.
To her eccentric and thoughtless youth succeeded a calm maturity in
which her conservative sagacity was steadily developed. She now worked
for her living, subject, however, to a nice discrimination by which she
limited herself to a certain amount of work, beyond which neither
threats, beatings, nor cajoleries would force her. At certain hours she
would start for the stable with or without the incumbrances of the cart
or Michael, turning two long and deaf ears on all expostulation or
entreaty. "Now, God be good to me," said Michael, one day picking
himself out from a ditch as he gazed sorrowfully after the flying heels
of Jinny, "but it's only the second load of cabbages I'm bringin' the
day, and if she's shtruck NOW, it's ruined I am entoirely." But he was
mistaken; after two hours of rumination Jinny returned of her own free
will, having evidently mistaken the time, and it is said even consented
to draw an extra load to make up the deficiency. It may be imagined
from this and other circumstances that Michael stood a little in awe of
Jinny's superior intellect, and that Jinny occasionally, with the
instinct of her sex, presumed upon it. After the Sunday episode,
already referred to, she was given her liberty on that day, a privilege
she gracefully recognized by somewhat unbending her usual austerity in
the indulgence of a saturnine humor. She would visit the mining camps,
and, grazing lazily and thoughtfully before the cabins, would, by
various artifices and coquetries known to the female heart, induce some
credulous stranger to approach her with the intention of taking a ride.
She would submit hesitatingly to a halter, allow him to mount her back,
and, with every expression of timid and fearful reluctance, at last
permit him to guide her in a laborious trot out of sight of human
habitation. What happened then was never clearly known. In a few
moments the camp would be aroused by shouts and execrations, and the
spectacle of Jinny tearing by at a frightful pace, with the stranger
clinging with his arms around her neck, afraid to slip off, from terror
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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