After standing all day over the
hot stove-fire, it was quite a refreshment to breathe the pure air
at night. Every evening I ran up to see Jenny in the bush, singing
and boiling down the sap in the front of her little shanty. The old
woman was in her element, and afraid of nothing under the stars;
she slept beside her kettles at night, and snapped her fingers at
the idea of the least danger. She was sometimes rather despotic in
her treatment of her attendant, Sol. One morning, in particular,
she bestowed upon the lad a severe cuffing.
I ran up the clearing to the rescue, when my ears were assailed by
the "boo-hooing" of the boy.
"What has happened? Why do you beat the child, Jenny?"
"It's jist, thin, I that will bate him - the unlucky omadhawn! Has
not he spilt and spiled two buckets of syrup, that I have been the
live-long night bilin'. Sorra wid him; I'd like to strip the skin
off him, I would! Musha! but 'tis enough to vex a saint."
"Ah, Jenny!" blubbered the poor boy, "but you have no mercy. You
forget that I have but one eye, and that I could not see the root
which caught my foot and threw me down."
"Faix!
