"You'll have to look after me, dear, when we get to Shrewsbury," she
said, after we had spent some distracted moments in hunting for the
ticket, and the cat had almost escaped from the basket, and the
bundle-handkerchief had become untied and all its miscellaneous
contents scattered about our laps and the floor. It was a touching
collection of the last odds and ends of Mrs. Peet's housekeeping: some
battered books, and singed holders for flatirons, and the faded little
shoulder shawl that I had seen her wear many a day about her bent
shoulders. There were her old tin match-box spilling all its matches,
and a goose-wing for brushing up ashes, and her much-thumbed Leavitt's
Almanac. It was most pathetic to see these poor trifles out of their
places. At last the ticket was found in her left-hand woolen glove,
where her stiff, work-worn hand had grown used to the feeling of it.
"I shouldn't wonder, now, if I come to like living over to Shrewsbury
first-rate," she insisted, turning to me with a hopeful, eager look to
see if I differed. "You see't won't be so tough for me as if I hadn't
always felt it lurking within me to go off some day or 'nother an' see
how other folks did things. I do' know but what the Winn gals have
laid up somethin' sufficient for us to take a house, with the little
mite I've got by me. I might keep house for us all, 'stead o' boardin'
round in other folks' houses. That I ain't never been demeaned to, but
I dare say I should find it pleasant in some ways.
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