"I reckon I du jest now," sez I, "quite a considerable deal, and upwards."
With that she sort a smiled agin, and somehow that other leetle hand in her lap kinder crept along under the loose slimsey sleeve, as if it wanted tu get better acquainted with mine. My mudgrappler didn't object tu be introduced.
"It's orful pleasant weather, for time o'year," sez I, and my hand kinder crept along towards hern a mite.
"Very," sez she, a looking at the tall candlestick as soft as summer butter; "very."
"I also kinder like tu go into the woods in the fall, and see the trees a turnin all sorts o' colors, red and blue and yaller; and see the chesnuts, jest ripe enough tu drop from there prickly shucks, and hear the but'nuts a ratlin down tu the dry leaves. Oh, gauly! I wish you and I was there now, if it was ony jest tu watch the chip-munks and gray squirrels a carrying off the nuts in their mouths and fore paws. Did you ever see a harnsome black squirrel, with a shagbark between his whiskers, a hoppin among the trees, arter they're stript more'rn half naked by the frost?"
Then my fingers begun to travel agin like anything.
"Yes," sez she, "I love a pet squirrel dearly."
By this time my hand had got tu the eend of its journey and put up.
"Harnsome critters, aint they," sez I, a'most out o'breath, I was so skeared. "Captin Doolittle has got a rale sneezer down at the vessel, as black as git out, his tail curls up over his side like the feather in a gal's bonnet, and he's got an eye as bright and sharp as if it had been cut out o' yourn. I'll hook it from the old coot, cage and all, and bring it up tu you, if you've a notion tu it, consarn me if I don't."