In that moment of despair and remorse, her mind worked as it must always have done before the Salem priestess befogged it with hazy philosophies, understood neither by teacher nor by pupil.

Peter had come back, but could suggest nothing.

Benella forgot her 'science,' which prohibits rage and recrimination, and called him a great, hulking, lazy vagabone, and told him she'd like to have him in Salem for five minutes, just to show him a man with head on his shoulders.
"You call this a Christian country," she said, "and you haven't got a screwdriver, nor a bradawl, nor a monkey-wrench, nor a rat-tail file, nor no kind of a useful tool to bless yourselves with; and my Miss Peabody, that's worth ten dozen of you put together, has got to stay home from the Castle and eat warmed-up scraps served in courses, with twenty minutes' wait between 'em.

Now you do as I say: take the dining-table and set it out under the window, and the carving-table on top o' that, and see how fur up it'll reach.

I guess you can't stump a Salem woman by telling her there ain't no ladder." The two tables were finally in position; but there still remained nine feet of distance to that key of the situation, Salemina's window, and Mrs.Waterford's dressing-table went on top of this pile.