e Silas he says:

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

"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's-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' 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?"

"Ther's six _candles_ gone--that's what. The rats could 'a' got the
candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with the
whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't
do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair,
Silas--_you'd_ never find it out; but you can't lay the _spoon_ on the
rats, and that I _know_."

"Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it; I've been remiss;
but I won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes."

"Oh, I wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta
_Phelps!_"

Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the
sugar-bowl without fooling around any. Just then the nigger woman
steps onto the passage, and says:

"Missus, dey's a sheet gone."

"A _sheet_ gone! Well, for the land's sake!"

"I'll stop up them holes to-day," says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.

"Oh, _do_ shet up!--s'pose the rats took the _sheet?_ _Where's_ it
gone, Lize?"

"Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss' Sally. She wuz on de
clo's-line yistiddy, but she done gone: she ain' dah no mo'