Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-04-03

pace l lived at was Elder ,yy,nes's. sLe
vas an awful sarcy woman. m wn,
Always askin' what 1 was a.goin, tew
uon' n advisin' raound, m, putterin,
pver a pit O. cookin' thet the old bow
nimsel1 wouldn't eat, m usin' a bit q
Mhiee rag fur a buster. She warn't
apie 10 set up nohaow; but SEEM she
was a elders wife, 1 s'pose she cal
kilated she'd got tew set an example.
Ell nothin' more. But ez fur me, I'm
pertlckler, m I couldn't STAN her
cGok,n, or cleanin'. I don't know
whether yeour ways would suit me or
not' out L thought 'twouldn't do no
harm tew neither ov us eff I should
come N try it a spell, SEEM as yeou
haln' got nobody else"
Mrs. Winsor gladly accepted this
oner, n lcibinda commenced her
lelgh at once, taking possession of the
ha.cneh with great majesty, asking no
4uesClons, n shutting her ears to all
lnlormatlon. The family awaited din
1er WIFE m%lsgivings, but were happily
disappointed. If somewhat eccentric,
1t was savory, and served with liberali.
ty and neatness. The master of the
mousse voted the pudding a MASTER
piece; the mistress praised everything
from q tull and thankful heart. But
the praise was received with magnificent
l~ndlnerence. and the only remark which
the new hand-maiden was heard to
make that day was to the end that she
couldn't stop to eat anything herself
until she got the house into m kind
OF decent order; she couldn't stan such
a looking place nohaow."
She scrubbed and secured and re-
arranged for several days, never paus-
ing in her work for a moment from
dawn till bedtime, never speaking or
going out for a breath of fresh air. and
then, evidently being more satisfied
with her surroundings, she arrayed
herself gorgeously M twilight and
went to walk in the graveyard. And
thereafter. whenever shetook her walks
abroad, it was to this lonely spot-a
little in%closure on a hillside pasture.
where groups of silver-birches stood
like ghosts in the midst of dark ever
green trees.
Have you any friends buried there?"
Mrs. Winsor ventured to inquire one
day.
Nobody tibet I know Of" was the
reply.
Don't you feel rather dismal wan
dering about there in the dark? 1
should think you would rather 90 and
visit your friends"
Most things is dismal, but I'd q
heap rather listen tew the whip-poor-
wills a-singin' there than tew hear folks
a-gossipin'."
The family were quite satisfied with
the appearance of their door-yard,
though it was still in the eloquent dis
order of nature. The mistress would
have liked a fower-bed, but there were
so many stumps and rocks imbedded in
the soil that it seemed hardly worth
the while to attempt such a thing.
Then, too, there were wild flowers
violets. anemones and dandelions-
peeping through the clustered ferns
everywhere, and gay marsh-marigolds
following the footsteps of a brook that
came creeping in under the fence rails
and danced off to the river. But
lcibinda, after r%enovating the house,
announced that she could not ''stan'
such q lookin' place another minute.
She was a-goin' tew clear it up m hev
a t1ower-bed by the front door. The
door-yards of the back folks warn't a
bit wuss, so ez fur her part she was
downright ashamed of it," Whereupon
she set to work with a good will,
pruned every tree of its decayed twigs,
covered the stumps with creeping vines
brought from the woods, scraped every
straw and splinter from the ground,
and then proceeded to spade up the
hower-bed with her own strong hands.
but though the tlower-bed proved a
great success, and was the gayest thing
in the neighborhood from late June
until the frost came, it was not wholly
satisfactory In some respects.
Being in the front of the house, lei
binda's presence attracted the atten-
ton of 1oitcrers, and more than one
young man from the village fingered
by the gate to gain an opportunity to
speak with her. Icibinda was certain
ly attractive to the other sex, though
she treated male and female alike with
naughty silence. eThere was one, a
dark shadowy youth, who looked more
like a crayon drawing than a real flesh
and blood man, who wa particularly
persistent in his addresses to the gate
and tie back of his fair ones head. He
was the proprietor of the travelingpho-
tograph saloon, and had been brought
up in the same neighborhood with her.
"She won't have anything to say to
him; she's kind of cracked about n
other feller." said Mrs. Copeland, the
neighbor who had been the means of
sending tcibinda to Mrs. Winsor. ''She
N Joe Hinton was promised to each
other, but he got jealous, m in a fit o.
temper went off N merried Lily Din
kins, a shiftless, tighty, good-for-noth-
ing girl from down-river. She
leads him a pretty dance, they say; m
l guess he wishes his cake was dough
if ever a man did. As for Icibindy,
she hasn't been the same girl since he
left her. She was never very lively,
but she used tew be sociable enough,
N real kind of smiling and pleasant
as a general thing, though there was a
streak of oddly born in her. m she
sometimes acted rather curious. Folks
thought the affair would end tragical
at first, but l don't see as she's any
thing more than struck dumb. Her
grandmother before her was a great
hand for g%raveyards m being