[The Attache by Thomas Chandler Haliburton]@TWC D-Link bookThe Attache CHAPTER XI 23/30
Her eyes were so sunk in her head, they looked like two burnt holes in a blanket.
Her hair was pushed back, and tied so tight with an eel-skin behind her head, it seemed to take the hide with it. I 'most wonder how she ever shot to her eyes to go to sleep.
She had no stockins on her legs, and no heels to her shoes, so she couldn't lift her feet up, for fear of droppin' off her slippers; but she just shoved and slid about as if she was on ice.
She had a small pipe in her mouth, with about an inch of a stem, to keep her nose warm, and her skin was so yaller and wrinkled, and hard and oily, she looked jist like a dried smoked red herrin', she did upon my soul. "The floor of the room was blacker nor ink, because that is pale sometimes; and the utenshils, oh, if the fire didn't purify 'em now and ag'in, all the scrubbin' in the world wouldn't, they was past that. Whenever the door was opened, in run the pigs, and the old woman hobbled round arter them, bangin' them with a fryin' pan, till she seemed out o' breath.
Every time she took less and less notice of 'em, for she was 'most beat out herself, and was busy a gettin' of the tea-kettle to bile, and it appeared to me she was a-goin' to give in and let 'em sleep with me and the lawyer, near the fire. "So I jist puts the tongs in the sparklin' coals and heats the eends on 'em red hot, and the next time they comes in, I watches a chance, outs with the tongs, and seizes the old sow by the tail, and holds on till I singes it beautiful.
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