Puritan Suburbia

ELIAS: Good morrow, neighbor! How fares thee on this fine day?

JEZEBEL: Good morrow, Elias. ‘Tis a fine day indeed. I’m faring well, sweeping my porch and admiring the beauty of the natural world.

ELIAS: Cool, cool. Yeahhh, about that… I pray you’ve heard my dear wife Prudence and I have begun a Village Association?

JEZEBEL: Indeed.

ELIAS: Oh, okay. I didn’t chance to glimpse you at the meeting last evening.

JEZEBEL: Oh, was that yesterday? Forgive me, Elias – it must’ve slipped my mind.

ELIAS: Mhm. Well, discussed at the meeting was a small matter of importance pertaining to your porch.

JEZEBEL: My porch?

ELIAS: Yeahhhh. It’s not, per say, harmonious with the rest of the huts in our village. If this were Virginia or Delaware perhaps the porch would be acceptable. But here in the Massachusetts colony we must hold ourselves to a certain standard of hut.

JEZEBEL: I’m not sure I follow, Elias.

ELIAS: Prithee, Jezebel, some of our fellow villagers were wondering if it might be possible for you to remove the porch.

JEZEBEL: Excuse me? I just built this porch! Surely, Elias, our neighbors are simply put out of sorts by the poor harvest. They can’t truly expect me to tear down this porch?

ELIAS: Ah, well, I fear that is exactly what we expect. Oh, here comes my dear wife Prudence now!

PRUDENCE: Jezebel! How fares thee?

JEZEBEL: Good morrow, Prudence. The day is fair and yet I am hearing such unpleasantness about this matter of my porch.

PRUDENCE: Ah yes, the porch. Pray, Jezebel, were you not at the gathering?

JEZEBEL: No. No, I missed the Village Association meeting.

PRUDENCE: But surely you were at the Parent Tutor Association gathering the week before?

JEZEBEL: No, I guess I must’ve been out foraging that night.

PRUDENCE: Hm. Well, it’s a shame you weren’t present. These gatherings are so important to the unity of our community here. You missed marking the scroll for a shift at the festival next spring. And we all know the festival takes the support of the entire village to be successful.

JEZEBEL: Look, forgive me. I needed to find some mushrooms to feed my family. We’ve been eating mostly dirt since my husband perished.

PRUDENCE: And what a tragedy that was, truly. Though I did think Samuel’s passing was…well, rather sudden.

JEZEBEL: Um. Well, yes. But now we all know not to eat the berries on those bushes.

ELIAS: One simply wonders how Samuel thought to eat the berries in the first place. If perhaps they may have found their way onto his supper one night.

JEZEBEL: I shudder at the implication! Samuel’s death was an accident and a tragedy!

ELIAS: And no one in the village would ever consider otherwise were the matter of the porch to be settled.

JEZEBEL: Well, I simply refuse to tear down my porch. We can take this matter to the governor at the next full moon.

ELIAS: I see. It’s a shame we couldn’t see eye to eye on this matter.

PRUDENCE: You see, the Village Association was prepared for this sort of response to our request…

ELIAS & PRUDENCE: Witch! She’s a witch! We’ve got a witch over here! Hey, everybody! Witch!!!

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