Some fourteen months before that day my uncle had taken me to Potsdam and traded grain and salts for what he called a "rip roarin' fine suit o' clothes" with boots and cap and shirt and collar and necktie to match, I having earned them by sawing and cording wood at three shillings a cord. How often we looked back to those better days! The clothes had been too big for me and I had had to wait until my growth had taken up the "slack" in my coat and trousers before I could venture out of the neighborhood. I had tried them on every week or so for a long time. Now my stature filled them handsomely and they filled me with a pride and satisfaction which I had never known before. The collar was too tight, so that Aunt Deel had to sew one end of it to the neckband, but my tie covered the sewing.
Since that dreadful day of the petticoat trousers my wonder had been regarding all integuments, what Sally Dunkelberg would say to them. At last I could start for Canton with a strong and capable feeling. If I chanced to meet Sally Dunkelberg I need not hide my head for shame as I had done that memorable Sunday.
"Now may the Lord help ye to be careful--awful, terrible careful o' them clothes every minute o' this day," Aunt Deel cautioned as she looked at me. "Don't git no horse sweat nor wagon grease on 'em."
To Aunt Deel wagon grease was the worst enemy of a happy and respectable home.
We hitched our team to the grasshopper spring wagon and set out on our journey. It was a warm, hazy Indian-summer day in November. My uncle looked very stiff and sober in his "new" clothes. Such breathless excitement as that I felt when we were riding down the hills and could see the distant spires of Canton, I have never known since that day. As we passed "the mill" we saw the Silent Woman looking out of the little window of her room above the blacksmith shop--a low, weather-stained, frame building, hard by the main road, with a narrow hanging stair on the side of it.
"She keeps watch by the winder when she ain't travelin'," said Uncle Peabody. "Knows all that's goin' on--that woman--knows who goes to the village an' how long they stay. When Grimshaw goes by they say she hustles off down the road in her rags. She looks like a sick dog herself, but I've heard that she keeps that room o' hers just as neat as a pin."