There were two rooms to the toll-house, the front one being a
kind of shop containing a counter, candy jars set in the windows,
shoestrings and boxes of thread on shelves, and a codfish or two
sprawled upon nails and covered with netting. From the back door you
could descend into a garden, and at the end of the garden was a pig-sty,
occupied by a white pig almost as tidy and precise as his owner. In
the toll-woman's living room there was a cupboard fringed with tissue
paper, a rocking-chair cushioned in red calico, curtains to match, a
cooking-stove so small it seemed made for a play-thing, and yellow
chairs having gold-leaf ornaments on their backs. She herself was a
straight, flat woman, looking much broader in a front or back view
than when she stood sidewise toward you. Her face was very good-natured.
Altogether she seemed just the ready and capable wife for whom the
man went to London after the rats and the mice led him such a life.
Though in her case it is probable the wheelbarrow would not have
broken, nor would any other mishap have marred the journey.
"You don't live here by yourself, do you?" inquired Grandma Padgett
as the tea and the meal in common warmed an acquaintance which the
fact of their being from one State had readily begun.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197