Miss Josephine Burgess was a setting in her back shop a thinking over the 'pothecary chap, and the dollars and cents she'd skinned out of the gals' wages that week, a making them work at half price because the times were so bad, when the 'pothecary came a tip-toeing through the store looking as tickled as if he'd found a sixpence. He took two ball tickets out of his vest pocket and held one on 'em out to the milliner, and stood a bowing and a grinning like a darned babboon till she read the writin' on it.
"I raly don't know what to say," sez she, "I never have been to the Tammany hall, and I—I——"
"It'll be the top of the notch, this one," sez the chap, "they're a goin to be awful partickler who they invite—nothing but the raly genteel who get tickets, I promise 'em."
Miss Josephine Burgess puckered up her mouth, and said "she didn't know: she was afeard she might meet with some of the working classes—she——"
"Don't say no—it'll break my heart, it will sartinly," sez the lovyer. "Don't drive me to takin pison on your account—oh don't."
Miss Josephine kinder started up—gave a sort of a scream—and said she wouldn't drive the 'pothecary to taking pison, and that she would go the ball. The minit she said that the leetle chap went right off into a fit of the dreadful suz: he slumped right down on his marrow bones, and begun to nibble away like all natur at the four little fingers, that stuck out of Miss Josephine Burgess's right hand mit.
"Oh, say only jest one thing more, and I shall be so happy, I shall want to jump out of my skin," sez he, all in a twitteration.
"Oh, dear me, what do you mean? I swanny, I'm all in a fluster," sez she.
"Here, down on my knees, I ask, I entreat, I conjure, most beautiful of wimmen folks," sez he, "that you be my partner, not only at the ball, but through this ere mortal life, that is a stretching before us like a great paster lot covered over with tansey, wild rhubarb and sage roots all in bloom—don't blush, my angel, but speak!"