Page 100 - English Class 08

“You laugh at me,” said he to the father. “You think my ambition is nonsensical.” “It is

better to sit here by this fire,” answered the father, “And comfortable and contented though
nobody thinks about us.”

“I suppose,” said the father again after a fit of musing, “There is something natural in
what the young man says; and if my mind had been turned that way, I might have felt just
the same. It is strange, wife! How his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty
certain never to come to pass.” “We’re in a strange way tonight,” said his wife with tears in

her eyes. “They say it’s a sign of something when folk’s minds go on wandering so. Hark to
the children!”

“I’ll tell you what I wish, mother,” said the little boy. “I want you and father and
grandmother and all of us and the stranger, too, to start right away and to take a drink out of
the basin of the flume!” Nobody could help laughing.

“Old folks have their notions,” said grandmother, “As well as young ones. You’ve been
wishing and planning; and letting your heads run on one thing and another, till you’ve set
my mind wandering, too. Now, what should an old woman wish for, when she can go a step

or two before she comes to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell you.”
“What is it, mother?” cried the husband and wife at once.

Then the old woman, with an air of mystery , drew the circle closer around the fire,
informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes some years before – a nice linen
shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and everything of a finer sort that she had worn since her
wedding day. But this evening, a superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used to be

said, in her younger days, that if anything were amiss with the corpse, if only the ruff was
not smooth or the cap did not set right, the corpse in the coffin and beneath the clods
would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought made her nervous.

“Don’t talk so, grandmother!” said the girl shuddering .

“Now,” continued the old woman with singular earnestness, yet smiling strangely at her
own folly, “I want one of you, my children, when your this old mother mystery : puzzle
is dressed and in the coffin. I want one of you to hold a looking glass superstition : myth

over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at myself.” shudder : shake
For a moment, the old woman’s ghastly conception so engrossed the minds of her hearers
that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar of a blast, had grown broad, deep and

terrible, before the fated group was conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the
foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound were the peal of the last
trump. Young and old exchanged one wild glance and remained instant, pale, affrighted
without utterance or power to move. Then, the same shriek burst simultaneously from all lips.

English-8 100