Cousin Maude

He's writin' this for me. Thar's a tower run up

in the northeast eend, and when it's complete, she's goin' to have a

what you call 'em--somethin' that blows up the water--oh, a

fountain. Thar's one in the yard, and, if you'll believe it, she's

got one of Cary's rotary pumpin' things, that folks are runnin'

crazy about, and every hot day she keeps John a-turnin' the injin'

to squirt the water all over the yard, and make it seem like a

thunder shower! Thar's a bathroom, and when them city folks is here

some on 'em is a-washin' in thar all the time. I don't do nothin'

now but wash and iron, and if I have fifty towels I have one! But

what pesters me most is the wide skirts I has to do up; Miss Canady

wears a hoop bigger than an amberell.

They say Miss Empress, who makes these things, lives in Paris, and I wish you'd put yourself

out a little to see her, and ask her, for me, to quit sendin' over

them fetched hoops. Thar aint no sense in it! We've got jiggers in

every chamber where the water spirts out. Besides turnin' the injin

John drives the horses in the new carriage. Dr. Canady looks poorly,

and yet madam purrs round him like a kitten, but I knows the claws

is thar. She's about broke him of usin' them maxims of his, and your

poor marm would enjoy it a spell seein' him paid off, but she'd pity

him after a while. I do, and if things continners to grow wus, I

shall just ask pra'rs for him in my meetin'. Elder Blossom is

powerful at that. My health is considerable good, but I find I grow

old. Yours, with respect and regrets," Hannah.

"P.S.--I don't believe that t'other beau of yourn is none the

happiest. They live with Miss Kelsey yet, but thar's a story round

that she's a-gwine to marry again, and the man don't like De Vere,

and won't have him thar, so if the doctor should run out, as I'm

afraid he will, what'll them lazy critters do? Nellie's got to be

kinder sozzlin' in her dress, and he has took to chawin' tobacker by

the pound.

They was here a spell ago, and deaf as I be, I hearn 'em

have one right smart quarrel. He said she was slatterly, or

somethin' like that, and she called him a fool, and said she 'most

knew he wished he'd took you, blind as you was, and he said, kinder

sorry-like, 'Maude would never of called me a fool, nor wore such

holes in the heels of her stockin's.' I couldn't hear no more, but I

knew by her voice that she was cryin', and when I went below and

seen the doctor out behind the woodshed a-figgerin' up, says I to

myself, `If I was a Univarselar, I should b'lieve they was all on

'em a-gittin' thar pay,' but bein' I'm a Methodis', I don't believe

nothin'."