Her face looked fairly haggard with anxiety, but even as I looked the anxious lines wuz smoothed from her worried face like magic, and I see Robert Strong come in and approach the group at the piano.
Miss Meechim leaned back in her chair in a restful, luxurious attitude, and sez she: “Oh, what a relief! What a burden has rolled off from me! Robert knows just how I feel; he will protect her from matrimony. Now I can converse with ease and comfort,” and she turned the subject round on missionary teas and socials and the best way to get ’em up.
The next mornin’ Arvilly didn’t appear to breakfast. I waited some time for her, for I wanted her to go sightseeing 296 with me, and Arvilly wuz as punctual as the sun himself about gittin’ up in the mornin’, and about as early.
I thought to myself: “Is Arvilly a-goin’ to come up missin’, as our dear Aronette did?” I wuz agitated. I sent to her room, but no answer. My agitation increased. I then went to her room myself, but my knock at her door elicited no reply. I then spoke in anxious, appealin’ axents:
“Arvilly, are you there? And are you sick a-bed? Or are you dead? Answer me, Arvilly, if either of my conjectures are true!”
My axent was such that she answered to once, “I hain’t dead, Josiah Allen’s wife, and I hain’t sick, only heart-sick.”
Sez I, “Let me in then; I can’t have you there alone, Arvilly.”
“I hain’t alone!” sez she. “Grief is here, and everlastin’ shame for my country.”
It come to me in a minute, this wuz the anniversary of her husband’s death, the day our govermunt’s pardner, the licensed saloon, had murdered him down in Cuba.
I sez, “May God help you, Arvilly!” And I turned onto my heel and left. But I sent up a tray of good vittles which wuz refused, and I d’no as she eat a mou’ful that day.