"
"A mountain bank? You mean a mountebank--an impostor?"
"Yes'm,"--the mouth shut and the eyes flashed again. "He allowed he'd
break the rupe after he'd walked on it, and he said it wasn't stretched
tight enough, and went along a feeling of it; and Misc Somers found out
every time he teched of it he put on some bluestone water or somethin'
else to rot it, so, of course, he bruke it easy. But Misc Somers's going
to tell him, if he comes agin, he's a mountin-bank. Lord sakes! she
ain't afraid."
"So, since it has ceased to be a tavern, dear, you see no more
jugglers?"
"The last shew there," Rhoda said, "was the canninbils and the
missionary. The missionary had converted of 'em, and they didn't eat no
more; but he tuld how they used to eat people; and they stouled a pony
outen the stables an' run to the Cypress swamp, and thar they turned out
to be some shingle sawyers he'd just a stained up. Misc Somers is
a-waitin' for him. Lord sakes! she don't keer."
"And so you were an orphan, brought up at the old roadside stage-house
at Newark? And who is Mrs. Somers?"
"Misc Somers, she's a ole aunt of Par Hullin. She an' me live together
sence par and mar died of the pilmonary. Oh, I have a passel of beaus
that takes me over to the Oushin on Sinepuxin beach, outen the way of
the skeeters, an' thar we wades and sails, and biles salt and roasts
mammynoes. Aunt Vesty, I can cut out most any girl from her beau; but,
Lord sakes! I ain't found no man I love yet.
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