"Darn the critter," sez I, a'most out loud, and a pulling my mitten up so wrothy that a whole swad of frieze gin away in my hand. "Does the stuck up varmint feel above riding with an honest Yankee, because he haint got no title? I'll be licked if a lord ever gets a speck of good manners from me agin, consarn the hull biling on 'em."
With that I gin an allfired jump, and settled down in the carriage, as savage as a young arthquake, and sot down on one of the harnsome cushions kivered over with silks and figgered off with blue and white roses, that kivered the two seats and sort of sprangled up over the sides and ruff of the carriage. A narrow finefied border squirmed all around the cushions, around the doors, and into all the corners, and the hull consarn made a chap feel as if he was shut up in a band-box, lined with silk and with a chunk of the sky, white clouds and all, shut over him for a lid.
I was so allfired wrothy, that, without thinking on it, I histed my boots agin one of the cushions, jest as it's nat'ral tu, when a feller's so mad he can't help it, and left a purty considerable smooch of blacking amongst the blue and white posies, that sot them off ruther more than cousin Jase would like, I calculate.
Them carriages do cut dirt so soft and easy like a streak of greased lightning, that there is no knowing how fast a feller gets along. It didn't seem more than a half a jiffy when we drew up co-wallop right afore Jase's house. Down got the two varmints in white topped stompers, open went the door, and out I jumped.
I didn't have to ring at the silver knob, but the door swung open of itself, or seemed tu, and in I poked, as independent as a clam in high water, but not afore I'd ketched a squint at that shaller little Jemima, a peaking out from behind the winder curtains to see who was coming with me.
A chap took my hat and things in the entry way, and asked me what my name was, sort of low, as if it was something I ought to be ashamed of; and the minnit I told him, he went to the door of the keeping-room and bawled out,
"Mr. Jonathan Slick."
I went in and there sot our Jase, in a great armed chair, as red and pussy as a turkey-gobbler, jest afore Christmas. He got up and come for'ard, but looked nation wamblecropped when he see that there wasn't nobody with me. That wife of his'n cum up with her fat hands stuck out, and asked how I was, and why Lord Morpeth didn't cum, and Jemima, she stood a giggling worse than ever, and a tossing them yaller curls of her'n about on her shoulders and cousined me off to kill.
I told Jase how Lord Morpeth had sarved me, but he didn't seem to mind that, arter he found out that he was a coming by-am-by, so we sot down. I took a sort of a survey of the premises. Now if there is anything that makes me mad, it's to see a chap a selling off his harnsome things when they git a little siled or out of fashion. I couldn't no more sell a cheer or a table that any of my friends had eat off from, or sot on, than I would strike my granny. Jest think how you'd feel to see grand par Slick's arm'd chair sold at Vandue, or the chest o' drawers that marm kept her "leetle things" in when I was a baby bought in by the neighbors. It makes me feel wamblecropped only jest to think of it, and yet there wasn't a single thing in the two great rooms that I went into at Cousin Jase's, that had a place where it was the last time I was there. Everything looked spick-span new, and I haint no doubt that the hull house had been transmogrified and titivated up jest cause a Lord was coming to eat dinner there. The carpets were a'most all red, with a vine of pink and yaller a running crinkle-crankle all over 'em as if somebody had been a scattering a hat full of butter-cups and meadow pinks all over it, the whole consarn giving under your feet like a flat meadow lot thick with a fall arter growth.
Great smashing looking-glasses were set into the wall from top to bottom between the winders, and a hull dry-goods store of red silk curtains sot off with yaller bordering, fell in great heavy winrows from over a couple of long spikes, feathered off at the eend, and a glistening with gold, kivered both ends of the room all but the looking-glasses and winders. A whopping great picter of Jase a setting in his easy chair, and reading a book, kivered with velvet and gold, was hung over one mantle-tree shelf, and over t'other sot his wife, all feathers and flowers, and silks and satins, with her red pussy face a shining among the whole, and all pen'd up in a gold frame, as wide as a slab, and a glist'ning like all natur.