The ragman's trade has its traditions and romances; and the tales of fortunes found by ragpickers are beautiful truths to all of their calling; so this ragpicker, like all others, carefully felt the pockets and linings of the garments that came to him. During his thirty years of rag-picking he had found one two-dollar bill, seven ten-cent pieces, eighteen five-cent bits, one pair of gloves and an average of one lead pencil a year--but he still hoped.
Finding a fortune in rags, however, is a little like trying to locate the pot of gold at the rainbow's foot.
Myron Holder had heard plainly the ragman's query and Mrs. Deans' reply. Old Henry Deans, blossoming forth like a snail out of its shell, as soon as his wife's back was turned, said with leering facetiousness, "Ah--a fellow askin' after you, Myron," and pointed his fist with a look that made the blood spring to the woman's cheeks and linger there, a painful blot as though the face had been smitten. She bent over her tub in silence, her heart hot within her. The regard of such men and women as Myron Holder lived among may not seem of much moment to us, nor their criticisms of any import at all, but it must be remembered that they formed Myron Holder's world; and their verdict upon her was terrible, inasmuch as with them lay the power of inflicting the penalty they pronounced.
Mrs. Deans bustled in, rattling her pie-plates. Every one was at work and unhappy, so after scathing her husband with a contemptuous look, on general principles, she betook herself to the kitchen proper, and soon getting the quilting-frames into position, proceeded to "tie" her quilts, which process consisted in dotting their resplendent red and blue surfaces with fuzzy knots of yellow yarn.
That night, when Myron Holder went home, she thought for the first time, once or twice rebelliously, of the portion meted out to her; but that unaccustomed mood passed and left her in her normal condition of self-reproach.
It is perhaps true that martyrdom is a form of beatitude; but, if compulsory, it rarely has a spiritualizing effect. Myron Holder was condemned to endure all the "slings and arrows" that a spiteful, narrow-minded village can aim. She arose in the morning and ate her hasty breakfast to the sound of bitter words, directed with the unerring malignity of long-suppressed dislike, at last given an excuse for expression. She worked all day, subject to the taunts of a vulgar virago, the coarseness of that unlicked cub, Gamaliel, the intolerable leers and jibes of the half-paralyzed Henry Deans. She returned at night to be greeted by her grandmother's venomous reproaches. Doubtless she deserved all this--but her acceptance of it might have been different, for Myron Holder had come of no slavish race of down-trodden serfs. She had sprung from a long line of sturdy English forbears, lowly indeed, but free and bold. It would scarcely be a matter for wonder had Myron Holder fought with her back against the wall, defied the world she knew, utterly--its narrow prejudices, cramped conventions, traditionary decencies; but she did not. At this time she neither rebelled nor struggled--she endured; so did Prometheus.