Tell the Sisters that all the maple sugar
that was ever poured into fatty gourds couldn't hurt the children's
teeth now. The poor little things, and all of us, will have mighty
little use for teeth--or stomachs either, for that matter--if things
don't take a turn for the better a good deal sooner than I think they
will. For my part, I don't see what else anybody can expect with that
big black ring round the comet's head a-getting bigger and blacker every
night of our miserable lives."
She called all the small cup-bearers,--for some unknown reason she never
called one or two without calling all,--and sent them running to the
smoke-house to fetch the fatty gourd. She threatened them fiercely in
her dovelike tones, saying what she would do if they loitered, or
stopped to put their little black paws in the sugar. But the cup-bearers
knew Miss Penelope quite as well as she knew them, and when they came
back with the fatty gourd they waited, as a matter of course, till she
gave each one of them a generous handful of the sugar, before handing
the gourd to David.
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