“It is the most aggravating thing in this world that I seem to be always a-letting out of seams, and yet always a-having my gown bodies split somewhere or other when I put them on!” said the widow, apropos of her work, as she laid the open seam over her knee and began smoothing it out with her chubby fingers.
“You’re gettin’ too fat, that’s where it is. You’re gettin’ a great deal too fat,” remarked plain-spoken Miss Sibby.
“Well! That’s just what I’m complaining of! I’m getting so fat that the people make fun of me behind my back; they’d better not try it on before my face, I can tell them that!”
“How do you know they make fun of you at all?”
“By instick! I know it. And besides, this very morning, when Jake came from the post office, what did he fetch me? Not the letter from the old ’oman, as I was a-hoping and a-praying for! No! but a big onwelope with a impident walentine in it!”
“A walentine!”
“Yes, ma’am! A most impident one! A woman—no—a haystack dressed up like me, with impident verses under it! I wish I knowed who sent it! I’d give ’em walentines and haystacks, too, for their impidence.”
“Oh, don’t yer mind that! It was some boys or other! Boys is the devil, sez I, and you need never to expect nothing better from them, sez I! You can’t get blood out’n a turnip, sez I! nor likewise make a silk purse out’n a sow’s ear, sez I, and no more can’t you expect nothing out’n boys but the devil. Why, la! I got a wuss walentine than yourn! Found it tucked underneath of the front door this morning. Jest look at it!” said Miss Sibby, drawing a folded paper out of her pocket, opening and displaying it to her companion.
“See here,” she continued, pointing out its features as she spread it on her knee. “Here a tower, with a man on the top of it and a crown on the head of him, and his arms stretched out just as he has chucked an old ’oman over the wall! And here’s the old ’oman halfway down to the ground with her hands and feet flying. And onderneath of it all is wrote, ‘Descended from a duke.’ That’s meant for me, you know! It’s a harpoon on me and the Duke of England! But I don’t mind it! Not I! It’s nothing but their envy, sez I. The birds will pick at the highest fruit, sez I!”
“I think they ought to be well thrashed! Wish I had hold of ’em!”