“This shore has been a toilin’ day fer me,” sighed Mrs. Wopp, as she opened the oven door and revealed a array of loaves, their brown up and over the sides of shining black pans.
“This stove is not drawin’ any too good, an’ what with these pipes an’ the pipes not actin’ christian-like my eyes run warter orl day long. Ebenezer Wopp, I sees a job ahead fer you. My patience is wore out an’ this very day you’ll git at the pipes and git the cleaned out.”
“I reckon it is the biggest half of some time sence those there jints was took apart,” agreed Ebenezer, with unerring , searching through several slips of paper as though to find thereon, “I reckon I’d better git to work this very minute.”
“Moses!” called husband and wife, . Mrs. Wopp’s voice spanned an of about a dozen semi-tones, and as it always grew in volume in direct ratio to the emergency of the duty to be imposed, the last of her son’s name fell on that wretched boy’s ear like a clap of thunder. Mr. Wopp’s accents remained on nearly all occasions at the same even degree of . Nature had not given him the to indulge in crescendos or double .
Moses was whistling a air in the backyard when the voice of his mother his ears.
“Yeh, .”
“What yer whistlin’ so mournful like?” his mother, “makes me think of funerals an’ sich like; jist come in an’ help yer with the stove-pipes, mebbe that’ll cheer you up.”
Moses’ face became as mournful as his music had been. It was as though he had suddenly realized that life was, after all, more serious than one suspects in one’s idle moments.
The first act of the recruit was to bring into the house a coal-scuttle and large , clanking them as he walked.
“Stop that there ‘Dead March of Saul,’ an’ go put on yer ,” ordered Mrs. Wopp, “what’s the idear of the gardenin’ tool, go git the littlest shovel to put the chimbly, an’ don’t let the grass grow under yer feet, neither.”
By this time Mr. Wopp was bearing a length of pipe into the yard. The parlor looked like a morgue with its inanimate objects lying bidden under sheets and cloths of varying degrees of past usefulness. Through a hole of one sheet could be seen the listless towzled head of Hannah, her faded wax betraying the need of a .
The energetic Mrs. Wopp had accompanied her commands to Moses by a wide of arms, and from these ample arms had billowed yards of sheeting to cover from the ruinous soot her treasured parlor possessions.
An enlarged crayon portrait in a wide frame of Moses as a baby in a state of round cherubic innocent nudity, had been added recently to the mural decorations and was especially well covered with cloths.
“Wisht that orful ’d fall inter the swill-pail an’ then turn a somerset in the soot-pile,” murmured the boy as he noticed the care exercised over its safety.
In overalls, the color of which was unrecognizable, Moses began to help his father carry through the house sooty lengths of pipe. Very carefully and gingerly they stepped as the eagle eye of Mrs. Wopp was upon them, and they knew that a full battery of reprimands and warnings was at hand.
In the middle of this trying work, Moses remembered he had glimpsed a large tempting piece of jelly-roll on the pantry shelf. As soon as an moment arrived he slipped, unnoticed as he thought, into the pantry and immediately life took on a new and brighter interest.
“Here you, Moses,” shouted his mother from the top of the stairs, “I heerd the pantry door squeakin’, no eatin’ till the job’s done.” She further informed him that stopping to eat “et inter his time too much an’ the work must be done afore dark.”
Moses returned to work with jelly and soot in a purple on cheek and chin.
“You look like some kind-faced happygo-lucky cow, chewin’ her cud,” teased Mrs. Wopp, at the parlor door and noting the reminiscent moving of her son’s .
“This is excitin’ fun,” moaned Moses, as he picked his way carefully with a tin elbow that threatened every moment to capsize with its flaky mass of black dust, “about as excitin’ as playin’ with the ashes in the mornin’.”
All this time Mr. Wopp had carried and brushed and shaken stove-pipe lengths until his face and bald head resembled a latticework trellis. Only one length remained to be operated on before to the upper storey, where the stove-pipe continued its way to the chimney, warming rooms on its beneficent course.
Ebenezer Wopp was the last silent word in patient masculinity, but his face, becoming darker with his work, would lead an to believe that thoughts were struggling to find expression.
However, the stove-pipe was at last cleaned and ready to put up. Moses’ had by now developed into a complaint, the chief symptoms of which were sniffling and coughing.
“I got an orful cold, goin’ in an’ out so orften,” he complained.
“A dose of senner tea’ll fix that, my boy,” was Mrs. Wopp’s cheerful rejoinder.
What really Moses was the of up the pipes again.
“Here, Mose, hoi’ this here jint while I fit the next one inter it.” A tongue-twisting silence ensued.
“Now, Mose, fer the elbow. Stiddy! Don’t shove! Don’t pull! Hole her stiddy!”
“Glory be! It’s pulled apart at the other end!” ejaculated the assistant.
“Try agin, Mose, now not too hard! Easy like! There! Jest a leetle bit more! Stop! Hold on! Shucks! Everythink’s went wrong! Here, we’ll start agin.”
The work went on, each length at the first possible opportunity resuming its state of strict neutrality and refusing to be into .
Finally, Ebenezer Wopp’s musings, which had been force as he worked, burst into speech. For a quiet man he became almost . Then he fell to soliloquizing audibly.
His mutterings along, a series of submerged imprecations. He paused for breath and as soon as he had accumulated enough for his purpose, he swore what was to him a long and fearful oath.
“By heck!” he thundered.
Then Moses commenced. He ran up and down a scale of and and sniffles, ending with a that sounded like, “Gosh dern!”
Involved and intricate variations of “Holy smoke!” made the air sulphureous as a swaying piece of wire caught his shoulder and tore a large in his shirt.
“Moses Habakuk Ezra Wopp an’ Eb............