“No, Samantha, I’ve got my conscience all right. I brought it with me on my tower.”
“Why should you leave it to Ury? He’s your hired man, he would do as you told him to,” sez I. “For a Methodist deacon such acts are demeanin’ and disgustin’ for a pardner and Jonesville to witness, let alone the country.” And agin I sez, “You can stop it in a minute if you want to, and you 205 know right from wrong, you know enough to say yes or no without bringin’ Ury into the scrape; Ury! spozein’ you git him into it, I can tell you he won’t bear the brunt of it before the bar of this country or that bar up above. You’ll have to carry the responsibility of all the evil it duz, and it will be a lastin’ disgrace to you and the hull Methodist meetin-house if you let it go on.”
Agin he sez, “Ury fixed it all right.”
“How did Ury fix it?” sez I, in the cold axents of woman’s skorn and curiosity.
“Well, Ury said, make Bardeen stop sellin’ whiskey out of the cupboard, make him sell it out of the chist. There is a big chist there that Bardeen bought to keep grain in, sez Ury; let Bardeen move that cupboard acrost the room back into Jonesville, set the chist up on the sink in Zoar and sell it out of that. Ury said that in his opinion that would make it all right, so that a perfessor and a Methodist deacon could do it with a clear conscience.”
Sez I, “Do you write to once, Josiah Allen, and tell Bardeen to either stop such works, or move right out.”
“Well,” sez he blandly, real bland and polite, “I will consider it, Samantha, I will give it my consideration.”
“No, no, Josiah Allen, you know right from wrong, truth from falsehood, honesty from dishonesty, you don’t want to consider.”
“Yes, I do, Samantha; it is so genteel when a moral question comes up to wait and consider; it is very fashionable.”
“How long do you lay out to wait, Josiah Allen?” sez I, coldly.