The Colonel shut the door,--cast his eye on the toe of his right boot,
as if it had had a strong temptation,--looked at his watch, then round
the room, and, going to a cupboard, swallowed a glass of deep-red
brandy and water to compose his feelings.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY.
(_With a Digression on "Hired Help"_)
"Abel! Slip Cassia into the new sulky, and fetch her round."
Abel was Dr. Kittredge's hired man. He was born in New Hampshire, a
queer sort of a State, with fat streaks of soil and population where
they breed giants in mind and body, and lean streaks which export
imperfectly nourished young men with promising but neglected appetites,
who may be found in great numbers in all the large towns, or could be
until of late years, when they have been half driven out of their
favorite basement-stories by foreigners, and half coaxed away from them
by California. New Hampshire is in more than one sense the Switzerland
of New England. The "Granite State" being naturally enough deficient in
pudding-stone, its children are apt to wander southward in search of
that deposit,--in the unpetrified condition.
Abel Stebbins was a good specimen of that extraordinary hybrid or mule
between democracy and chrysocracy, a native-born New-England
serving-man.
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