Uncle Peabody had been silent and depressed for a month or more. He had signed a note for Rodney Barnes, a cousin, long before and was afraid that he would have to pay it. I didn't know what a note was and I remember that one night, when I lay thinking about it, I decided that it must be something in the nature of horse colic. My uncle told me that a note was a trouble which attacked the brain instead of the stomach. I was with Uncle Peabody so much that I shared his feeling but never ventured to speak of it or its cause. He didn't like to be talked to when he felt badly. At such times he used to say that he had the brain colic. He told me that notes had an effect on the brain like that of green apples on the stomach.
One autumn day in Canton Uncle Peabody traded three sheep and twenty bushels of wheat for a cook stove and brought it home in the big wagon. Rodney Barnes came with him to help set up the stove. He was a big giant of a man with the longest nose in the township. I had often wondered how any one would solve the problem of kissing Mr. Barnes in the immediate region of his nose, the same being in the nature of a defense.
I remember that I regarded it with a kind of awe because I had been forbidden to speak of it. The command invested Mr. Barnes' nose with a kind of sanctity. Indeed it became one of the treasures of my imagination.
That evening I was chiefly interested in the stove. What a joy it was to me with its damper and griddles and high oven and the shiny edge on its hearth! It rivaled, in its novelty and charm, any tin peddler's cart that ever came to our door. John Axtell and his wife, who had seen it pass their house, hurried over for a look at it. Every hand was on the stove as we tenderly carried it into the house, piece by piece, and set it up. Then they cut a hole in the upper floor and the stone chimney and fitted the pipe. How keenly we watched the building of the fire! How quickly it roared and began to heat the room!
When the Axtells had gone away Aunt Deel said:
"It's grand! It is sartin--but I'm 'fraid we can't afford it--ayes I be!"
"We can't afford to freeze any longer. I made up my mind that we couldn't go through another winter as we have," was my uncle's answer.