say, they always had had their thoughts about anybody that tooted
so loud -- it might be all right but it didn't look well, and
would be apt to make talk. Or they would say that he wuz
shiftless and extravagant a loafin' round in the clouds, when he
might go to work -- or that he might raise the money himself by
selling the feathers offen his wings for down pillers -- or some
of the rest of the Gabriel family might help him -- or something,
or other -- anyway they would propose some way of gittin' out of
givin' a cent to Gabriel. I believe it as much as I believe I
live and breathe; and so does Josiah.

Wall, Miss Mooney wouldn't give anything because she thought Jane
Smedley wuzn't so sick as she thought she wuz; she said "she was
spleeny."

And I told Miss Mooney that when a woman was sick enough to die, I
thought she ort to be called sick.

But Miss Mooney wouldn't give up, and insisted to the very last
that Miss Smedley wuz hypoey and spleeny -- and thought she wuz
sicker than she really wuz. And she held her head and her nose up
in a very disagreeable and haughty way, and said as I left, that
she never could bear to help spleeny people.

Wall, all that forenoon did I traipse through the street and not
one cent did I get for the Smedleys, only Miss Gowdey said she
would bring a cabbage and Miss Deacon Peedick and Miss Ingledue
partly promised a squash apiece. And I mistrusted that they give
'em more to please me than anything else.