[Illustration: “A-comin’ up from the suller.”]
“If four tons of coal hain’t a test, I don’t know a test when I see it.”
We had got down in front of the furnace by this time, and I looked down
on it pityin’ly, it looked so fearful small, and the cold all round it
seemed so intense.
And I sez, “The poor little thing hain’t to blame: it duz the best it
can, but it has took too hefty a job on it for its size and
constitution.”
He wuz a-leanin’ over the top of the furnace, a-brushin’ off the icicles
from his whiskers; and he sez, almost mechanically,—
“You know the man said it wuz such a heater; you know he said it wuz
fairly dangerous.”
“Yes,” sez I, “but I learned long ago to put not your trust in princes,
or agents,” sez I. “That is Bible, Josiah, part on’t.”
Wall, he shivered so that I got him out of the furnace-room as quick as
I could, and then I went up-stairs, a-wroppin’ my thick woollen shawl
more closely round my frame, and I looked round to see what had become
of my hired woman, for I feared the worst; I feared she had perished.
But no, I found she wuz resusitated. I found her a-settin’ on the
regester in the dinin’-room floor, the heat turned on to its utmost
capacity, and she wuz a-sewin’ on the carpet.
But she looked blue, and her frame shook. And she said she wuz cold,
bitter cold.