Trade was not especially brisk at the Deacon's emporium this
sunny June Saturday morning. Cephas may have possibly lost a
customer or two by leaving the store vacant while he toiled and
sweated for Miss Patience Baxter in the stockroom at the back,
overhanging the river, but no man alive could see his employer's
lovely daughter tugging at a keg of shingle nails without trying
to save her from a broken back, although Cephas could have
watched his mother move the house and barn without feeling the
slightest anxiety in her behalf. If he could ever get the "heft"
of the "doggoned" cleaning out of the way so that Patty's mind
could be free to entertain his proposition; could ever secure one
precious moment of silence when she was not slatting and banging,
pushing and pulling things about, her head and ears out of sight
under a shelf, and an irritating air of absorption about her
whole demeanor; if that moment of silence could ever, under
Providence, be simultaneous with the absence of customers in the
front shop, Cephas intended to offer himself to Patience Baxter
that very morning.
Once, during a temporary lull in the rear, he started to meet his
fate when Rodman Boynton followed him into the back room, and the
boy was at once set to work by Patty, who was the most consummate
slave-driver in the State of Maine.
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