but she bid on them to run them up to help Mrs. Scudmore, and the
auctioneer knocked them down quicker'n a wink. Said it was 'Lot 47,'
and she had to take it all. And she said maybe she could make up the
sun-bonnets into bibs for the baby and use the tea-pots for preserves.
She thought she might make a pretty fair bedstead out of the posts by
propping the other ends on a chair; and she said it was a lucky thing
she was so forehanded about those churns, because she might have a
cow knocked down to her, and then she would be all ready for
butter-making. More'n likely she'll buy some old steer and bring him
home while she's rummaging around for bric-a-brac.

"When the Paxtons had their sale in January she was around there,
of course, and came home after dinner with the usual dismembered
furniture; and when I said to her, 'Emma, why under Heaven did you buy
in the mud-dredge and the sausage-stuffer?' she said she thought the
sausage-stuffer would do for a cannon for the boys on the Fourth of
July, and there was no telling if Charley wouldn't want to be a
civil engineer when he grew up, and perhaps he'd get a contract for
deepening the channel of the river; and then he'd rise up and bless
the foresight of the mother who'd bought a mud-dredge for two dollars
and saved it up for him.

"I sold that scoop on Wednesday for old iron for fifteen cents; and
I'll bang the head off of Charley if he ever goes to dredging mud or
playing cannon with the sausage-stuffer. I won't have my boys carrying
on in that way.

"Over there at Robinson's sale I believe she'd've bid on the whole
concern if I hadn't come in while she was going it. As it was,
she bought an aneroid barometer, three dozen iron skewers, a