He sat thus in solitude for some time, blankly studying the grotesque patterns in the old-fashioned wall-paper, and drawing mechanically at the pipe in his mouth, unconscious that no smoke came. Thus Miss Sabrina found him when, after a more than ordinarily sharp passage at arms with Alvira, she returned from the Kitchen.
“I swaow! thet girl gits wuss tempered ’n’ more presumin’ ev’ry day o’ her life,” she exclaimed.
“Who—Annie?” asked her brother, rousing himself as if from a nap.
“Annie! nao! who’s talkin’ abaout her?”
“Oh nothin’, unly I was thinkin’ ’baout Annie—‘baout her ’n’ Seth, yeh knaow,” answered Lemuel, apologetically.
“Well, what abaout ’em?” The query was distinctly aggressive in tone.
“Oh, nothin’ much. I was sort o’ thinkin’—well, you knaow S’briny, haow Sissly used to lot on their makin’ a match of it—’n’ I was kine o’ wond’rin’ ef this here notion o’ Seth’s goin’ away wouldn’t knock it all in th’ head.”
“Well?” Miss Sabrina’s monosyllabic comment had so little of sympathy or acquiescence in it, that Lemuel continued in an injured tone and with more animation, not to say resolution:
“Well, I’ve hed kine of an idea o’ goin’ over ’n’ talkin’ it over with M’tildy. Mebbe that’ll be the best thing to dew.”
“Oh you think so, dew yeh? Thet’s all th’ pride you’ve got lef’, is it? I think I see myself goin’ hangin’ raound Matildy Warren, beggin’ her to let her granddaughter marry a Fairchild! I’m ashamed of yeh, Lemuel.”