CHAPTER II ELIJAH DOXEY AND HIS LOCKED BOX "Well," suggested Mrs. Lathrop one pleasant Saturday morning, a few days later, when she and her friend met at the fence. Miss Clegg looked slightly fretted and more than slightly warm, for she had been giving her garden an uncommonly vigorous weeding on account of an uncommonly vigorous shower which had fallen the afternoon before. The weeding had been so strenuous that Miss Clegg was quite disposed to stop and rest, and as she joined her neighbor and read the keen interest that never failed to glow in the latter's eyes, her own expression softened slightly and she took up her end of the conversation with her customary capability at giving forth.[Pg 21] [Pg 21] "I don't know," she began, "an' Mr. Kimball don't know either. Elijah was tellin' me all about it last night. He is a trouble, Mrs. Lathrop, but I don't know but what it pays to have a man around when you can have them to talk to like I have him. Of course a new broom sweeps clean an' I've no intention of supposin' that Elijah will ever keep on coverin' his soap an' scrapin' his feet long, but so far so good, an' last night it was real pleasant to hear the rain an' him together tellin' how much trouble they're havin', owin' to Hiram's bein' too energetic wringin' the handle of the printin' press an' then to think as when he was all done talkin' it would be him an' not me as in common decency would have to go out in the wet to padlock the chickens. Seems, Mrs. Lathrop, as they're really havin' no end o' trouble over the new paper an' Elijah's real put out. He says Hiram had a idea as the more the speed the better the paper an' was just wringin' for dear[Pg 22] life, an' the first thing he knew the first issue begin to slide a little cornerways an' slid off into a crank as Elijah never knowed was there, an' him an' Mr. Kimball spent the whole of yesterday runnin' around like mad an' no way to fix it. As a consequence Elijah's very much afraid as there'll be no paper this week an' it's too bad, for every one is in town spendin' the day an' waitin' to take it home with them. Young Dr. Brown is goin' to feel just awful 'cause he'd bought twenty-five papers to mail to all his college class. There was goin' to be a item about him, an' Mrs. Brown says it was goin' to be a good one for she fed Elijah mince pie while he made his notes for it an' had Amelia play on her guitar, too." [Pg 22] "What do you—?" began Mrs. Lathrop.
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