"Ther's six candles gone—that's what. The rats could a got the candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, Silas—you'd never find it out; but you can't lay the spoon on the rats, and that I know."
"MISSUS, DEY'S A SHEET GONE."
"Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it; I've been remiss; but I won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes."
"Oh, I wouldn't hurry, next year'll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta Phelps!"
Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any. Just then, the nigger woman steps onto the passage, and says:
"Missus, dey's a sheet gone."
"A sheet gone! Well, for the land's sake!"
"I'll stop up them holes to-day" says Uncles Silas, looking sorrowful.
"Oh, do shet up!—spose the rats took the sheet? Where's it gone, Lize?"
"Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss Sally. She wuz on do clo's-line yistiddy. but she done gone; she ain' dah no mo,' now."
"I reckon the world is coming to an end. I never see the beat of it, in all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can——"
"Missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick miss'n."
"Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye!"
Well, she was just a biling. I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She kept a raging
