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1
148
The Country of the Pointed Firs
·
Sarah Orne Jewett
92
XVI.
The
Great
Expedition
MRS.
TODD
never
by
any
chance
gave
warning
over
night
of
her
great
projects
and
adventures
by
sea
and
land.
She
first
came
to
an
understanding
with
the
primal
forces
of
nature,
and
never
trusted
to
any
preliminary
promise
of
good
weather,
but
examined
the
day
for
herself
in
its
infancy.
Then,
if
the
stars
were
propitious,
and
the
wind
blew
from
a
quarter
of
good
inheritance
whence
no
surprises
of
sea-turns
or
southwest
sultriness
might
be
feared,
long
before
I
was
fairly
awake
I
used
to
hear
a
rustle
and
knocking
like
a
great
mouse
in
the
walls,
and
an
impatient
tread
on
the
steep
garret
stairs
that
led
to
Mrs.
Todd's
chief
place
of
storage.
She
went
and
came
as
if
she
had
already
started
on
her
expedition
with
utmost
haste
and
kept
returning
for
something
that
was
forgotten.
When
I
appeared
in
quest
of
my
breakfast,
she
would
be
absent-minded
and
sparing
of
speech,
as
if
I
had
displeased
her,
and
she
was
now,
by
main
force
of
principle,
holding
herself
back
from
altercation
and
strife
of
tongues.
These
signs
of
a
change
became
familiar
to
me
in
the
course
of
time,
and
Mrs.
Todd
hardly
noticed
some
plain
proofs
of
divination
one
August
morning
when
I
said,
without
preface,
that
I
had
just
seen
the
Beggs'
best
chaise
go
by,
and
that
we
should
have
to
take
the
grocery.
Mrs.
Todd
was
alert
in
a
moment.
“There!
I
might
have
known!”
she
exclaimed.
“It's
the
15th
of
August,
when
he
goes
and
gets
his
money.
He
heired
an
annuity
from
an
uncle
o'
his
on
his
mother's
side.
I
understood
the
uncle
said
none
o'
Sam
Begg's
wife's
folks
should
make
free
with
it,
so
after
Sam's
gone
it'll
all
be
past
an'
spent,
like
last
summer.
That's
what
Sam
prospers
on
now,
if
you
can
call
it
prosperin'.
Yes,
I
might
have
known.
'Tis
the
15th
o'
August
with
him,
an'
he
gener'ly
stops
to
dinner
with
a
cousin's
widow
on
the
way
home.
Feb'uary
n'
August
is
the
times.
Takes
him
'bout
all
day
to
go
an'
come.”
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