"Why, in the name of old Babylon, don't you marry?"
"Marry? me marry—marry a man—a great awful man!" and the iron flew through the seams like lightning.
"Yes," continued Ike, "marry—marry a man—why, woman, you are getting as old and yellow as autumn leaves. What have you been livin' for?—you've broken all the laws of Scripter inter pieces—and keep on breakin' on 'em—adding sin unto sin, and transgression unto transgression, and the thing's got-ter be stopped. Now, Aunt Graves, what do you think—there's Squire Longbow, as desolate as Sodom, and he's got-ter have a woman, or the old man'll run as crazy as a loon a-thinkin' 'bout his household affairs; and you know how to cook, and to wash, and to iron, to make pickles and soap; and then, you're a proper age—what say?"
Aunt Graves ran to the fire, plunged her goose into the ashes, and gave the coals a smart stir. She then dropped down in her large rocking-chair, leaned her cheek upon her elbow, fixed her eyes upon the floor, and came near going off into hysterics.
Ike dashed a little water into Aunt Graves' face, and she revived. After having gained strength, she replied in substance to Ike's query in a very languishing, die-away air: "She couldn't say—she didn't know—if it was a duty—if she could really believe it was a duty—if she was called on to fill poor old dead-and-gone Mrs. Longbow's place—folks were born inter the world to do good, and she had so far been one of the most unprofitablest of sarvants; but she could never marry on her own account—"
"In other words," exclaimed Ike, cutting her short, "you'll go it."
Aunt Graves agreed to "reflect on't."
It was not long after this consultation that Mrs. Swipes began to "smell a rat," as she said. She commanded Mary Jane Arabella "never to darken the doors of that old hog, Longbow, agin; and as for that female critter, Graves, she'd got a husband living down at the East'ard, and they'd all get into prison for life, the first thing they know'd."
Sister Abigail declared, "she'd have Aunt Graves turned out of church, if she married a man who warn't a member." This was a great deal for Sister Abigail to say, for she had been the bosom friend of Aunt Graves: "people out of the church, and people in the church, shouldn't orter jine themselves together—it was agin Scripter, and would get everything inter a twist."
But Ike Turtle had decreed that the marriage should go on. He even went so far as to indite the first letter of the Squire's to Aunt Graves. This letter, which Ike exhibited to his friends, as one of his best literary specimens, was indeed a curiosity. I presume there is nothing else like it on the face of the globe. It opened by informing Aunt Graves that since the "loss of his woman, he had felt very grievous-like, and couldn't fix his mind onto anything—that the world didn't seem at all as it used to do—that he and his woman had liv'd in peace for thirty years, and the marriage state was nat'ral to him—that he had always lik'd Aunt Graves since the very first time he see'd her, and so did his woman too;" and many more declarations of similar import, and it was signed "J. Longbow, Justice of the Peace," and sealed too, like his legal processes, that his dignity might command, even if his person did not win, the affections of this elderly damsel.