Which if
they hadn't of been all worked up and talking
all to oncet and all thinking of Hank's body hanging
out there in the blacksmith shop they might of
suspicioned something. For that flopping kep' up
steady, and a lot of splashing too. I mebby orter
mentioned sooner it had been a dry summer and
they was only three or four feet of water in our
cistern, and Hank wasn't in scarcely up to his big
hairy chest. So when Elmira says the cistern
is full of fish, that woman opens the trap door and
looks in. Hank thinks it's Elmira come to get him
out. He allows he'll keep quiet in there and make
believe he is drowned and give her a good scare
and make her sorry fur him. But when the cistern
door is opened, he hears a lot of clacking tongues
all of a sudden like they was a hen convention on.
He allows she has told some of the neighbours,
and he'll scare them too. So Hank, he laid low.
And the woman as looks in sees nothing, for it's
as dark down there as the insides of the whale
what swallered Noah. But she leaves the door
open and goes on a-making tea, and they ain't
skeercly a sound from that cistern, only little,
ripply noises like it might have been fish.
Pretty soon a woman says:
"It has drawed, Elmira; won't you have a cup?"
Elmira she kicked some more, but she took hern.
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