第26章

"But one afternoon she was down to the sewin' circle, and the women folks there, havin' finished pickin' to pieces the characters of the members not on hand, started in to go on about the revivals and how much good they was doin'.'Most everybody had some relation, if 'twa'n't nothin' more'n a husband, that had stopped smokin' and chewin'.Everybody had some brand from the burnin' to brag about--everybody but Hannah; she could only set there and say she'd done her best, but that Kenelm still herded with the goats.

"They was all sorry for her, but the only one that had any advice to give was Abbie Larkin, she that was Abbie Dillin'ham 'fore she married old man Larkin.Larkin had one foot in the grave when she married him, and she managed to crowd the other one in inside of a couple of years afterward.Abbie is a widow, of course, and she is middlin' good-lookin' and dresses pretty gay.Larkin left her a little money, but I guess she's run through most of it by this time.The circle folks was dyin' to talk about her, but she was always on hand so early that they hardly ever got a chance.

"Well, after supper was over, Abbie gets Hannah over in a corner, and says she:

"'Miss Parker,' says she, 'here's an advertisement I cut out of the paper and saved a-purpose for you.I want you to look at it, but you mustn't tell anybody I gave it to you.'

"So Hannah unfurls the piece of newspaper, and 'twas an advertisement of 'Kill-Smudge,' the sure cure for the tobacco habit.You could give it to the suff'rer unbeknownst to him, in his tea or soup or somethin', and in a couple of shakes he'd no more smoke than he'd lend money to his brother-in-law, or do any other ridic'lous thing.There was testimonials from half a dozen women that had tried it, and everyone showed a clean bill.

"Hannah read the advertisement through twice.'Well, I never!'

says she.

"'Yes,' says Abbie, and smiles.

"'Of course,' says Hannah, lookin' scornful, 'I wouldn't think of tryin' the stuff, but I'll just take this home and read it over.

It's so curious,' she says.

"'Ain't it?' says Abbie, and smiles some more.

"So that night, when Kenelm sat by the stove, turnin' the air blue, his sister set at the other side of the table with that advertisement hid behind the Wellmouth Advocate readin' and thinkin'.She wrote a letter afore she went to bed and bought a dollar's worth of stamps at the postoffice next day.And for a week she watched the mails the way one of these city girls does when the summer's 'most over and eight or nine of her fellers have finished their vacations and gone back to work.

"About ten days after that Kenelm begins to feel kind of off his feed, so's to speak.Somethin' seemed to ail him and he couldn't make out what 'twas.They'd had a good many cranberries on their bog that year and Hannah'd been cookin' 'em up fast so's they wouldn't spile.But one night she brings on a cranberry pie, and Kenelm turned up his nose at it.

"'More of that everlastin' sour stuff!' he snorts.'I've et cranb'ries till my stomach's puckered up as if it worked with a gath'rin' string.Take it away! I don't want it!'

"'But, Kenelm, you're always so fond of cranb'ry pie.'

"'Me? It makes me shrivel just to look at it.Pass that sugar bowl, so's I can sweeten ship.'

"Next day 'twas salt fish and potatoes that wa'n't good.He'd been teasin' for a salt-fish dinner for ever so long, so Hannah'd fixed up this one just to please him, but he swallered two or three knifefuls and then looked at her kind of sad and mournful.

"'To think,' says he, 'that I've lived all these years to be p'isoned fin'lly! And by my own sister, too! Well, that's what comes of bein' wuth money.Give me my pipe and let me forget my troubles.'

"'Course this kind of talk made Hannah mad, but she argued that 'twas the Kill-Smudge gettin' in its work, so she put a double dose into his teacup that night, and trusted in Providence.

"And the next day she noticed that he swallered hard between every pull at his pipe, and when, at last, he jumped out of his chair, let out a swear word and hove his pipe at the cat, she felt consider'ble encouraged.She thought 'twas her duty, however, to warn him against profane language, but the answer she got was so much more prayerful than his first remarks, that she come about and headed for the sittin'-room quick.

"Well, to make a long yarn short, the Kill-Smudge done the bus'ness.Kenelm stuck to smokin' till he couldn't read a cigar sign without his ballast shiftin', and then he give it up.And--as you might expect from that kind of a man--he was more down on tobacco than the Come-Outer parson himself.He even got up in revival meetin' and laid into it hammer and tongs.He was the best 'horrible example' they had, and Hannah was so proud of him that she couldn't sleep nights.She still stuck to the Kill-Smudge, though--layin' in a fresh stock every once in a while--and she dosed the tea about every other day, so's her brother wouldn't run no danger of relapse.I'm 'fraid Kenelm didn't get any too much joy out of his meals.

"And so everything was all right--'cordin' to Hannah's reckonin'--and it might have stayed all right if she hadn't took that trip to Washington.Etta Ellis was goin' on a three weeks' cut-rate excursion, and she talked so much about it, that Hannah got reckless and fin'lly said she'd go, too.

"The only thing that worried her was leavin' Kenelm.She hated to do it dreadful, but he seemed tame enough and promised to change his flannels if it got cold, and to feed the cat reg'lar, and to stay to home, and one thing and another, so she thought 'twas safe to chance it.She cooked up a lot of pie and frosted cake, and wrote out a kind of time-table for him to eat and sleep by, and then cried and kissed him good-by.