Didn't they cut the dashes though! helter skelter, hurra boys; they went at it like a flock of sheep at salting time. By-am-by they all give out, and my gal, Fanny, she stood up with the leetle Yankee as if she was a going to dance a jig. She'd put on another petticoat streaked yaller and blue, but insted of running up and down, the streaks were a foot wide, and run round and round like the hoops of a barrel. She'd lost her hat, and a swad of the shineyest black hair that ever I saw on a gal's head was kinder slicked down on the sides, and twistified up in a knot behind her harnsome shaped head, and then topped off with a bunch of red roses and a pink ribbon that hung streaming down her back about as long as marm ties your cue, Par, when you go to meeting.
Wal, the leetle chap he begun to dance fust, and I thought I should a haw-hawed right out to see him strain and exart himself, while she stood by with her tarnal cunning head stuck a one side, so tickled, that the tee-hee fairly bust through, and made her larf sort of easy all over, but he didn't seem to know that she was a poking fun at him.
When the chap got through, Miss Elssler she jest sidled up as softly as a snow storm—gin her foot a twirl, and took a sort of genteel dive as if she was a going to swim in the air. Oh dear, didn't she swim, too! It was like a bird on an apple tree limb in spring time, or a boy's kite a sailing and ducking to a south wind. She didn't kick about, and shuffle, and all that, as I've seen 'em do; nor did she pucker and twist and sidle like the darned lazy varmints that I've seen among the fashionable big bugs; but she was as chirk as a bird, as quick as a grasshopper, and as soft as a mealy potatoe with the skin off.
By-am-by she broke off short, and spread out her hands, and curchied to the chap sort of sarsy, as if to say, "Beat that if you can."
Then the feller he tried agin, and then she, turn about, till at last she let herself off like a fire cracker on the fourth of July. One foot flew up into the air like a bird's wing, and whiz—off she went like a she comet kicked on eend. Then she sort of let her foot down by degrees, as a hawk folds its wing, and sloped off easy, a spreading her hands to the feller, and curchying so sarsy, as much as to say,
"Try and beat that, now du! all over agin if you can."
The critter sneaked off as if he couldn't help it, then the show went on, all of 'em talking in signs like deaf and dumb folks. But it would take a week of Sundays to tell you all. To give you the butt eend, she was married to the harnsome chap that run off with her; and out she cum all in white, with diamonds in her hair and on her neck, and her frock shone with 'em like a snowball bush kivered with dew in the arly summer. Goodness gracious! wasn't she a beauty without paint or whitewash, and didn't she dance! The folks stomped and yelled like a pack of Injuns, when the chap gave her a grip round the waist, and she stood on one toe with t'other leg stuck out, and her head twisted toward his bosom, a twittering like a white swan that would a flown clear off, if the feller hadn't held on like all natur. It raly seemed as if you could a seen the white feathers a ruffling up she was so eager to fly away.
Consarn that chap—darn him to darnation, I say! It made me riley to see him a holding on her as if there warn't nobody in creation but himself. I'll be hanged and choked to death if it wouldn't a done me good to have licked him on the spot. The mean finefied varmint! It was lucky the curtain went down ca-smash as it did. It give me time to kinder think what I was a doing, or he'd a ketched it.
I'd eenamost forgot about the auction, for arter the Astor House chap read the card, I begun to think there was some mistake; but by-am-by out come a queer looking chap, as chirk as a catydid, and he begun to sing off a lot of men and women folks to auction.
Think sez I, goodness gracious! if any body but me bids off that harnsome critter, I shall go off the handle; I sartinly shall. He'd knocked off an old maid and a widder, and an Irishman, and was jest a crying up an old bachelor, when I made up my mind to bid on her any way, if I had to sell the old sloop, garden sarse and all, to toe the mark.