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the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for
about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out
for half price if there was a bidder. But after that we was all right
again--it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold.
Uncle Silas he says:
"It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand it. I know perfectly
well I took it OFF, because--"
"Because you hain't got but one ON. Just LISTEN at the man! I know you
took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory,
too, because it was on the clo's-line yesterday--I see it there myself.
But it's gone, that's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have
to change to a red flann'l one till I can get time to make a new one.
And it 'll be the third I've made in two years. It just keeps a body on
the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to DO with 'm
all is more'n I can make out. A body 'd think you WOULD learn to take
some sort of care of 'em at your time of life."
"I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn't to be
altogether my fault, because, you know, I don't see them nor have nothing
to do with them except when they're on me; and I don't believe I've ever
lost one of them OFF of me."
"Well, it ain't YOUR fault if you haven't, Silas; you'd a done it if you
could, I reckon. And the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. Ther's a
spoon gone; and THAT ain't all. There was ten, and now ther's only nine.
The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon,
THAT'S certain."
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