own souls, that I says to myself -- loud enough so they could hear
me, mebbe, "Why is it that when anybody wants to do a mean,
ungenerous act, they will try to quote a verse of Scripter to
uphold 'em, jest as a wolf will pull a lock of pure white wool
over his wolfish foretop, and try to look innocent and sheepish."

I don't care if they did hear me, I wuz on the step mostly when I
thought it, pretty loud.

Wall, from Miss Bombus'es I went to Miss Petingill's.

Miss Petingill is a awful high-headed creeter. She come to the
door herself and she said, I must excuse her for answerin' the
door herself. (I never heard the door say anything and don't
believe she did, it was jest one of her ways.) But she said I
must excuse her as her girl wuz busy at the time.

She never mistrusted that I knew her hired girl had left, and she
wuz doin' her work herself. She had ketched off her apron I knew,
as she come through the hall, for I see it a layin' behind the
door, all covered with flour. And after she had took me into the
parlor, and we had set down, she discovered some spots of flour on
her dress, and she said she "had been pastin' some flowers into a
scrap book to pass away the time." But I knew she had been bakin'
for she looked tired, tired to death almost, and it wuz her bakin'
day. But she would sooner have had her head took right off than
to own up that she had been doin' housework -- why, they say that
once when she wuz doin' her work herself, and was ketched lookin'
awful, by a strange minister, that she passed herself off' for a
hired girl and said, "Miss Petingill wasn't to home, and when