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His Native Heath
by
Maybe you think the widow wa’n’t mad. She tip-toed out to the wood-pile, grabbed her new boarder by the coat collar and shook him till his head played “Johnny Comes Marching Home” against the chopping block.
“You lazy thing, you!” says she, with her eyes snapping. “Wake up and tell me what you mean by sleeping when I told you to work.”
“Sleep?” stutters Asaph, kind of reaching out with his mind for a life-preserver. “I–I wa’n’t asleep.”
Well, I don’t think he had really meant to sleep. I guess he just set down to think of a good brand new excuse for not working, and kind of drowsed off.
“You wa’n’t hey?” says Deborah. “Then ’twas the best imitation ever I see. What WAS you doing, if ’tain’t too personal a question?”
“I–I guess I must have fainted. I’m subject to such spells. You see, ma’am, I ain’t been well for–“
“Yes, I know. I understand all about that. Now, you march your boots into that house, where I can keep an eye on you, and help me get supper. To-morrer morning you’ll get up at five o’clock and chop wood till breakfast time. If I think you’ve chopped enough, maybe you’ll get the breakfast. If I don’t think so you’ll keep on chopping. Now, march!”
Blueworthy, he marched, but ‘twa’n’t as joyful a parade as an Odd Fellers’ picnic. He could see he’d made a miscue–a clean miss, and the white ball in the pocket. He knew, too, that a lot depended on his making a good impression the first thing, and instead of that he’d gone and “foozled his approach,” as that city feller said last summer when he ran the catboat plump into the end of the pier. Deborah, she went out into the kitchen, but she ordered Ase to stay in the dining room and set the table; told him to get the dishes out of the closet.
All the time he was doing it he kept thinking about the mistake he’d made, and wondering if there wa’n’t some way to square up and get solid with the widow. Asaph was a good deal of a philosopher, and his motto was–so he told me afterward, that time I spoke of when he’d been investigating the jug–his motto was: “Every hard shell has a soft spot somewheres, and after you find it, it’s easy.” If he could only find out something that Deborah Badger was particular interested in, then he believed he could make a ten- strike. And, all at once, down in the corner of the closet, he see a big pile of papers and magazines. The one on top was the Banner of Light, and underneath that was the Mysterious Magazine.
Then he remembered, all of a sudden, the town talk about Debby’s believing in mediums and spooks and fortune tellers and such. And he commenced to set up and take notice.
At the supper table he was as mum as a rundown clock; just set in his chair and looked at Mrs. Badger. She got nervous and fidgety after a spell, and fin’lly bu’sts out with: “What are you staring at me like that for?”
Ase kind of jumped and looked surprised. “Staring?” says he. “Was I staring?”
“I should think you was! Is my hair coming down, or what is it?”
He didn’t answer for a minute, but he looked over her head and then away acrost the room, as if he was watching something that moved. “Your husband was a short, kind of fleshy man, as I remember, wa’n’t he?” says he, absent-minded like.
“Course he was. But what in the world–“
“‘Twa’n’t him, then. I thought not.”
“HIM? My husband? What DO you mean?”
And then Asaph begun to put on the fine touches. He leaned acrost the table and says he, in a sort of mysterious whisper: “Mrs. Badger,” says he, “do you ever see things? Not common things, but strange–shadders like?”