“Give me time, Aunt Tabithy,” said I—“a good dinner, and after it a good cigar, and I will serve you such a sunshiny sheet of reverie, all twisted out of the smoke, as will make your kind old heart ache!”
Aunt Tabithy, in utter contempt, either of my mention of the dinner, or of the smoke, or of the old heart, commenced sweeping furiously.
“If I do not,”—continued I, anxious to appease her—“if I do not, Aunt Tabithy, it shall be my last cigar (Aunt Tabithy stopped sweeping); and all my tobacco money (Aunt Tabithy drew near me), shall go to buy ribbons for my most respectable and worthy Aunt Tabithy; and a kinder person could not have them; or one,” continued I, with a generous puff, “whom they would more adorn.”
My Aunt Tabithy gave me a half-playful—half-thankful nudge.
It was in this way that our bargain was struck; my part of it is already stated. On her part, Aunt Tabithy was to allow me, in case of my success, an evening cigar unmolested, upon the front porch, underneath her favorite rose-tree. It was concluded, I say, as I sat; the smoke of my cigar rising gracefully around my Aunt Tabithy’s curls; our right hands joined; my left was holding my cigar, while in hers, was tightly grasped—her broom-stick.
And this reverie, to make the matter short, is what came of the contract.
