When I appeared in quest of my breakfast, she would
be absent-minded and sparing of speech, as if I had displeased her,
and she was now, by main force of principle, holding herself back
from altercation and strife of tongues.
These signs of a change became familiar to me in the course of
time, and Mrs. Todd hardly noticed some plain proofs of divination
one August morning when I said, without preface, that I had just
seen the Beggs' best chaise go by, and that we should have to take
the grocery. Mrs. Todd was alert in a moment.
"There! I might have known!" she exclaimed. "It's the 15th
of August, when he goes and gets his money. He heired an annuity
from an uncle o' his on his mother's side. I understood the uncle
said none o' Sam Begg's wife's folks should make free with it, so
after Sam's gone it'll all be past an' spent, like last summer.
That's what Sam prospers on now, if you can call it prosperin'.
Yes, I might have known. 'Tis the 15th o' August with him, an' he
gener'ly stops to dinner with a cousin's widow on the way home.
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