'Be still now, Hetty, and labor to repent,' I said. When the time was
up, she said in a meek little mite of a voice, 'I think I'm least in the
Kingdom now, Eldress Abby!' 'Then run outdoors,' I said. She kicked up her
heels like a colt and was through the door in a second. Not long afterwards I
put my hands behind me to tie my apron tighter, and if that child had n't
taken my small scissors lying on the table and cut buttonholes all up and down
my strings, hundreds of them, while she was 'laboring to repent.'"
Elder Gray smiled reminiscently, though he had often heard the story before.
"Neither of the children came from godly families," he said, "but at least the
parents never interfered with us nor came here putting false ideas into their
children's heads."
"That's what I say," continued Abby; "and now, after ten years' training and
discipline in the angelic life, Hetty being especially promising, to think of
their going away together, and worse yet, being married in Albion village
right at our very doors; I don't hardly dare to go to bed nights for fear of
hearing in the morning that some of the other young folks have been led astray
by this foolish performance of Hetty's; I know it was Hetty's fault; Nathan
never had ingenuity enough to think and plan it all out.
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