The week which began that Wednesday afternoon seems, as I look back to it now, a bit of the remote past, instead of seven days of a year ago. Its happenings, important and wonderful as they were, seem trivial and tame compared with those which came afterward. And yet, at the time, that week was a season of wild excitement and delightful anticipation for Hephzibah, and of excitement not unmingled with doubts and misgivings for me. For us both it was a busy week, to put it mildly.
Once convinced that I meant what I said and that I was not “raving distracted,” which I think was her first diagnosis of my case, Hephzy's practical mind began to unearth objections, first to her going at all and, second, to going on such short notice.
“I don't think I'd better, Hosy,” she said. “You're awful good to ask me and I know you think you mean it, but I don't believe I ought to do it, even if I felt as if I could leave the house and everything alone. You see, I've lived here in Bayport so long that I'm old-fashioned and funny and countrified, I guess. You'd be ashamed of me.”
I smiled. “When I am ashamed of you, Hephzy,” I replied, “I shall be on my way to the insane asylum, not to Europe. You are much more likely to be ashamed of me.”
“The idea! And you the pride of this town! The only author that ever lived in it—unless you call Joshua Snow an author, and he lived in the poorhouse and nobody but himself was proud of HIM.”
Josh Snow was Bayport's Homer, its only native poet. He wrote the immortal ballad of the scallop industry, which begins:
“On a fine morning at break of day,
When the ice has all gone out of the bay,
And the sun is shining nice and it is like spring,
Then all hands start to go scallop-ING.”
In order to get the fullest measure of music from this lyric gem you should put a strong emphasis on the final “ing.” Joshua always did and the summer people never seemed to tire of hearing him recite it. There are eighteen more verses.
“I shall not be ashamed of you, Hephzy,” I repeated. “You know it perfectly well. And I shall not go unless you go.”
“But I can't go, Hosy. I couldn't leave the hens and the cat. They'd starve; you know they would.”