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•'Don't you ever pay him?**Pay him!” she snorted, and gave a withering glance before which i fled.On a sharp winter morning she announced: “The pipes are frozen and I am having water carried in.'*From across the alley came a lino of hoys, girls and an Italian woman bringing up the rear, with pitchers, buckets and jugs. Mattie stood with her hands folded and her head thrown back marshaling them with her military eye. All bowed profoundly as she closed the gate on them after their services.She is a tall woman and. summer or winter, always dresses in white, which is to say, wears a voluminous white apron completely covering her skirt and white kerchief crossed over her breast, the whole surmounted by a white cap.Hardly had she solved the water problem when some carta arrived with coal from the mines, and these having no chutes, the question was how the coal was to be got into the cellar. Voicing this anxiety, Mattie waved me indoors.“Drive tip, son. she commanded, and fearing he was an Irishman and might brain her with his shovel, I refloated to a parlor window, whence I saw the (art drivers shoveling a!l the loads across the wide pavement and doing various other services which were certainly not in the contract.I had long observed that market people grocers, etc., would never differ with her even when they were right and she had been mistaken, and asking one with whom I was friendly why this was, he said: “Oh. there is no use in making her mad, she is queer.”IJelii ving that a happy life consists in a prmb.nt compromise. I Ignored many of the mysteries, but one day I : aw Mattie walking In the front door with a nicely browned chicken on a plate in her hand.V « t ^ . . _ — . % 1 A . %
Newspaper Details
Conway Log Cabin Democrat
Conway, Arkansas, US
Mon, Oct 18, 1909
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 25 Apr 2025
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