But I'd enough decency not to let him see it.
He told me all about her. Her name was Persis Leigh,
and she would have come out with him if it hadn't been
for her old uncle. He was sick, and he'd looked after
her when her parents died and she wouldn't leave him.
And now he was dead and she was coming out to marry
John Selwyn. 'Twasn't no easy journey for a woman in
them days. There weren't no steamers, you must
ricollect.
"`When do you expect her?' says I.
"`She sails on the Royal William, the 20th of June,'
says he, `and so she should be here by mid-July. I
must set Carpenter Johnson to building me a home for
her. Her letter come today. I know before I opened it
that it had good news for me. I saw her a few nights
ago.'
"I didn't understand him, and then he
explained--though I didn't understand THAT much better.
He said he had a gift--or a curse. Them was his words,
Mistress Blythe--a gift or a curse. He didn't know
which it was. He said a great-great-grandmother of his
had had it, and they burned her for a witch on account
of it.
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