“Make up the bed in the north room, Hetty,” said my aunt; “it’s our turn to board the schoolmaster this week. You needn’t put on the best sheets: these book-learning folks are always wool-gathering. He never’ll know the difference. What a hungry set these schoolmasters are, to be sure: it keeps a body all the time cooking. A bushel of doughnuts is a mere circumstance. When the last master was here, our winter barrel of cider went off like snow in April. I hope Jonathan learned enough at school to pay for it, but I have my doubts: he trips in the multiplication table yet. Your uncle and I think that this boarding schoolmasters is a poor business--a losing bargain. He says I must put less on the table, but it is no use to try that game with George Grey. He’s as independent as Adam in Eden, before the serpent and his wife got in. He’d just as lief call for anything he wanted as not, and somehow or other, when he does, I always feel as if I had no choice about bringing it. That eye of his always makes me think of forked lightning; and yet he’s kindly spoken, too. He is as much of a riddle to unravel, as one of Parson Jones’ doctrinal sermons. But, go make his bed, Hetty, and mind you stuff a few rags in that broken pane of glass over it. I spoke to your uncle about getting it mended, but he said warm weather would be along in three months, and that’s very true, Hetty. Hist! your uncle is calling you. He says he is going out in the barn to thresh, and if Peter Tay comes up the road, and stops in here again, for him to subscribe towards the minister’s new cloak, you must say that he has gone to Jifftown, and will not be home for a week at least. Now don’t forget, Hetty: people seem to think one earns money now-a-days on purpose to give away. A new cloak! humph! I wonder if the Apostle Paul’s hearers ever gave him a new cloak? I wonder if John the Baptist ever had a donation party? Don’t the minister have his salary, two hundred dollars a year--part in produce, part in money; paid regularly, when the times ain’t too hard? Go make the school-master’s bed now, Hetty. One pillow will do for him. Goodness knows he carries his head high enough when he is awake. I shouldn’t wonder if he had been captain or colonel, or something, some muster day.”