and gethered the vegetables for dinner and washed the children's
hands and faces and put their Sunday clothes on 'em, and jest as I was
startin' to git myself ready for church,' says she, 'I happened to
think that I hadn't skimmed the milk for the next day's churnin'. So
I went down to the spring-house and did the skimmin', and jest as I
picked up the cream-jar to put it up on that shelf Sam built for me,
my foot slipped,' says she, 'and down I come and skinned my elbow on
the rock step, and broke the jar all to smash and spilled the cream
all over creation, and there I was--four pounds o' butter and a
fifty-cent jar gone, and my spring-house in such a mess that I ain't
through cleanin' it yet, and my right arm as stiff as a poker ever
since.'

"We all had to laugh at the way Milly told it; and Sally Ann says,
'Well, that was enough to make a saint mad.' 'Yes,' says Milly, 'and
you all know I'm far from bein' a saint. However,' says she, 'I picked
up the pieces and washed up the worst o' the cream, and then I went to
the house to git myself ready for church, and before I could git
there, I heard Sam hollerin' for me to come and sew a button on his
shirt; one of 'em had come off while he was tryin' to button it. And
when I got out my work-basket, the children had been playin' with it,
and there wasn't a needle in it, and my thimble was gone, and I had to
hunt up the apron I was makin' for little Sam and git a needle off
that, and I run the needle into my finger, not havin' any thimble,
and got a blood spot on the bosom o' the shirt. Then,' says she,
'before I could git my dress over my head, here come little Sam with
his clothes all dirty where he'd fell down in the mud, and there I had
him to dress again, and that made me madder still; and then, when I
finally got out to the wagon,' says she, 'I rubbed my clean dress
against the wheel, and that made me mad again; and the nearer we got
to the church, the madder I was; and now,' says she, 'do you reckon
after all I'd been through that mornin', and dinner ahead of me to
git, and the children to look after all the evenin', do you reckon
that I felt like settin' up there and singin' "Welcome, sweet day o'
rest"?' Says she, 'I ain't seen any day o' rest since the day I
married Sam, and I don't expect to see any till the day I die; and if
Parson Page wants that hymn sung, let him git up a choir of old maids
and old bachelors, for they're the only people that ever see any rest