I looked on him in horrow, and he added hastily, “Oh, I should wear a short tunic, Samantha, comin’ down most to my knees, with tossels on it, and I shouldn’t wear snakes or dragons on my skin, I should wear some texts of Scripter, or appropriate quotations, as Josiah the fair, or Josiah the pride of Jonesville, runnin’ down my legs and arms, and I shouldn’t have ’em pricked in, I could have ’em painted in gay colors.”
“Oh, heavens!” sez I, lookin’ up to the sky, “what won’t I hear next from this man!”
“I hadn’t said I should do it, Samantha; and ’tennyrate it would be only through dog-days. I said what a excitement it would make if I concluded to do it.”
Sez I, “It is a excitement that would land you in Jonesville jail, and ort to.”
But at that minute Arvilly and Miss Meechim come up to us and broke off the conversation. Japan boatmen jest wear a cloth round their loins, and some of ’em had a little square of matting fastened by a rope round their necks to keep the rain offen their backs.
After goin’ through the custom house, where we got off easy, we went to a tarven called the Grand Hotel and had a good night’s rest.
CHAPTER XVIII
The next mornin’, after tiffen, which wuz what they call breakfast, bein’ just so ignorant of good Jonesville language, Josiah and I and Tommy sallied out to see what we could see, the rest of our party havin’ gone out before.