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cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other, and

says:

"I've hunted high, and I've hunted low, and it does beat all, what has be-

come of your other shirt." ssssssssss

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece

of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a

cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the

eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a

war-whoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all

amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as

much as that, and I would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder. But

after that we was all right again -- it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked

us so kind of cold. Uncle Silas he says: ssssssssss

"It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand it. I know perfectly well

I took it off, because" ssssssssss

"Because you hain't got but one on. Just listen at the man! I know you

took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory, too,

because it was on the clo'es-line yesterday -- I see it there myself. But it's gone --

that's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have to change to a red flann'l

one till I can get time to make a new one. And it'll be the third I've made in two

years; it just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do

manage to do with 'm all, is more'n I can make out. A body'd think you would

learn to take some sort of care of 'em, at your time of life."

"I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn't to be altogether

my fault, because you know I don't see them nor have nothing to do with them

except when they're on me; and I don't believe I've ever lost one of them off

of me."

"Well, it ain't your fault if you haven't, Silas -- you'd a done it if you could,

I reckon. And the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. Ther's a spoon gone; and

that ain't all. There was ten, and now ther's only nine. The calf got the shirt

I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, that's certain."

"Why, what else is gone, Sally?"

ssssssssss

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