FullReads

“Do what on purpose?” said Ruth, pushing into the house, and looking around the empty kitchen in a bewildered way. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you know what you put into that parsnip stew?”

“No; I don’t know of anything I put in but some salt, just before I went to school; mother told me to. Why?”

“Oh, Ruth, you put in–saleratus!”

“I don’t believe it.”

Ruth flew into the pantry, and came out with a cracked blue cup. “Here,” said she–“here’s the salt-cup, and this is the one I got it out of, I know.”

“Taste of it,” said Serena, solemnly.

Ruth tasted. “It is saleratus,” said she, looking at her sister in horror. “Did it spoil the stew?”

“It was–dreadful.”

“I don’t see how it happened,” Ruth said, slowly, puckering her forehead, “unless mother dipped out some saleratus in the salt-cup to bring out in the kitchen when she mixed the sour-milk cakes for breakfast. I don’t know anything about it, true’s I live and breathe. I hope they didn’t think I did such a mean thing as that on purpose.”

“Well, I don’t know as they really thought you did, but you know you did kind of jerk round, Ruth, and the Wigginses saw it.”

“What did they say?”

“Well,” said Serena, “we all sat down to the table, and mother had put on the bread and apple-sauce for the rest of us, and she helped the Wigginses to the stew. There wasn’t more’n enough to go around, but she kept the cover over the dish so they shouldn’t suspect, and all the rest of us said we wouldn’t take any.

“Well, Mrs. Wiggins she tasted, and old Mrs. Wiggins she tasted. Then they looked at mother. Mother she didn’t know what it meant, and she kept getting redder and redder. Finally she spoke up. ‘Is there anything the matter with the stew?’ says she.

“Then Mrs. Wiggins she pushed over her plate for mother to taste of the stew, and the first thing we knew they were all talking at once. Old Mrs. Wiggins said she’d noticed how we acted kind of stiff, and as if we wasn’t glad to see them, the minute she come, and Mrs. Wiggins said she had, too, and she’d seen you put the saleratus into the stew, and she thought from the way you switched around you were up to something. Mother she tried to excuse it off, but they wouldn’t hear a word. They said it didn’t look very likely that it was an accident, and they noticed none of us took any of it, and mother wouldn’t tell them the reason for that. So they just got up and put on their things, and Mr. Wiggins backed out the horse, and they went home. Mother asked them to come again, and she’d try and have a better dinner, but they said they’d never set foot in the house again if they knew it.”

“Didn’t anybody eat the stew?”

“Nobody but Sammy Wiggins; he ate his whole plateful, saleratus and all, before anybody spoke.”

“Oh dear!” said Ruth; “I suppose mother feels dreadfully. Where is she?”

“She’s gone over to Lucy Ann’s to help her take care of the baby; he was real sick last night. I don’t believe she’ll come home till after supper. She felt dreadful.”

“The Wigginses are dreadful touchy folks, anyhow.”

“Course they are. It don’t seem as if anybody with any sense would get mad at such a thing. But they’re always suspecting folks of meaning something.”

Ruth looked sternly reflective. She took off her thick dingy shawl, and got from its peg a bright red and green plaid one that she wore in pleasant weather.

“Where are you going?” asked Serena.

“I’m going over to the Wigginses’.”

“What for?”

“I’m going to ask them to come over here to-morrow and spend the day.”

“Why, Ruth Whitman, ain’t you afraid to?”

“No, I ain’t afraid. I’m going to carry over a jar of the honey–mother ‘ll be willing–and I’m going to tell Mrs. Wiggins just how it was.”