"Oh!" says he, "it isn't a very tedious ride."
"Ride," says I. "Why, didn't you ask me just now to run on with you? How can I do both?"
Cousin D. laughed, and began to rock up and down till he almost bent double; though what it was about I couldn't begin to tell.
"Well," says he, "just get your trunk or carpet-bag packed, and I'll call for you in the morning. Emily Elizabeth can't leave home just now, and it will be a great pleasure to me if I can have you along."
"If you'd just as lief," says I, "I'll speak to Cousin E. E. about it; under present circumstances, a young girl like me can't be too particular. I'm told that a good many married men have got a habit of travelling toward Washington in what seems like a single state, and it's wonderful how many of them have unprotected females put under their charge—sometimes, both ways. If E. E. has no objection, I'll be on hand bright and early."
Dempster kept on laughing, and I went upstairs wondering what had set him off so, but when I asked Cousin E. E. if she had any objection to my travelling to Washington with her husband, she began to laugh too, as if it was the best sort of a joke that a York lady should be expected to care about her husband's travelling off with other feminine women.
"Why," says she, a-wiping the fun and tears from her eyes with a lace handkerchief, "what do you think I care! We don't keep our husbands shut up in band-boxes here in the great metropolis."
"No," says I to myself, "nor do you get much chance to shut 'em up at home, according to my thinking."
"Besides," says she, with comicality in her eyes, looking at me from head to foot: "I should never think of being jealous of you, Cousin Phœmie."
Here, that child looked up from a novel she was a-reading.