_Dont be afrade of it
drink it all_
the little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the handle,
and poured its contents over the earth around her largest geranium. She
poured the contents out to the last drop, and then she dropped the pot,
and ran back and sat on her bed and cried, with her face hid in her
hands.
"Now," she said to herself, "you've done it! And you're just as nasty
and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as--as pusley!" And she wept to
think of her hardness of heart. "He will never give me a chance to say
'I am sorry,'" she thought. And really, she might have spoken kindly to
the poor man, and told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he
really must not ask her to drink porter with him.
"But it's all over and done now," she said to herself as she sat at her
window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and saw
the faithful little pewter pot traveling slowly toward her.
She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too much for
her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper,
_porter is good for Flours
but better for Fokes_
and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not half so red as her
cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.
She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and presently
she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view. On the
table at her side a few pearl buttons were screwed up in a bit of white
paper. She untwisted the paper and smoothed it out, and wrote in a
tremulous hand--she _could_ write a very neat hand--
_Thanks._
This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent two-foot
rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then she sat still,
enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed to have permeated her
entire being with a heat that was not at all like the unpleasant and
oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an atmosphere heavy with the spring
damp. A gritting on the tin aroused her. A piece of paper lay under her
eyes.
_fine groing weather
Smith_
Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of conversational
commonplaces there was one other greeting that could have induced the
seamstress to continue the exchange of communications. But this simple
and homely phrase touched her country heart. What did "groing weather"
matter to the toilers in this waste of brick and mortar? This stranger
must be, like herself, a country-bred soul, longing for the new green
and the upturned brown mold of the country fields. She took up the
paper, and wrote under the first message:--
_Fine_
But that seemed curt: "for--" she added; "for" what? She did not know.
At last in desperation she put down "potatoes." The piece of paper was
withdrawn, and came back with an addition:--
_Too mist for potatos_
And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the fact that
"m-i-s-t" represented the writer's pronunciation of "moist," she laughed
softly to herself. A man whose mind at such a time was seriously bent
upon potatoes was not a man to be feared. She found a half-sheet of
note-paper, and wrote:--
_I lived in a small village before I came to New York, but I am
afraid I do not know much about farming. Are you a farmer?_