Adams was a woman of bitter tongue, and enduring, hot, and unscrupulous
in anger and in revengefulness. I have inquired sufficiently; I know it
is true. The vulgar malice of a hard woman has murdered a fair and good
maiden with the invisible arrows of her wicked words.
But she begins already to be punished, coarse cast-iron as she is.
People do not exactly like to talk with her. She is growing thin. She
has been ill,--a thing, I am told, never dreamed of before. Of course
she reported to her husband the reproaches with which I had surprised
her on the very day of Bridget's death. She had called in by chance, and
had not even heard of her illness; had herself begun to retail to me the
kind of talk with which she had poisoned the village, not knowing that
her evil work was finished; and it was the scornful carelessness of her
reply to my first reproof that stung me to answer her so bitterly. It
was two weeks before good, white-haired, old Deacon Adams came to the
house of his pastor. His face looked careworn enough. He stayed long
in the study with my husband, and went away sadly. I happened to pass
through our little hall just as the Deacon opened the study-door to
depart; and I caught his last words, very sorrowful in tone,--
"She might git well, ef she could stop dreamin' on't, and git the weight
off 'm her mind.
Pages:
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321