Wid. D. I can’t bear hired girls.
Peedick. You look like the corpse; you do look like her, I see it plainer and plainer. And oh, what a woman that was, she knew her place so well; she always said wimmen wasn’t equal to men. You couldn’t have hired her to have had rights. She always said wimmin was too delicate and feeble to have rights; she said that she had rather dig potatoes any day than to have ’em. She could dig potatoes as fast as a man.
Wid. D. I knew I wasn’t the equal of Doodle. He used to set in the rock’n’ chair while I would be ho’ng out the garden, or bringin’ in wood, or churnin’ and read such beautiful arguments to me, and so convincin’, provin’ it all out how havin’ rights would be too much for the weaker sect, and that men wouldn’t feel nigh so tender and reverential towards ’em as they did now.
Peedick. Then you used to hoe out the garden and bring in wood?
Wid. D. Yes, I loved to; I loved to dearly.
Peedick. Widder, I am a man of business. My wife has been dead three weeks, and she won’t be no deader if I should wait three months as some men do. I heard you a praisin’ up my wagon and span of mares to-night, and if you’ll be my bride, the wagon is yours and the mares. Widder, I throw myself onto your feet, and I throw the wagon and the mares onto ’em, and with them and me. I throw eighty-five acres of good land, 14 cows, 5 calves, 4 three-year-olds, and a yearlin’, a dwellin’ house, a good horse barn and myself. I throw ’em all onto your feet, and there we lay on ’em.
Wid. D. Oh, Doodle! Doodle! if you was alive you would tell your widder what to do to do right.
Peedick. Widder, I am a layin’ on your feet, and my property, my land, my live stock, my housen and my housen stuff, are all a layn’ on ’em. Make up your mind at once, for if you don’t consent, I have got other views ahead of me which must be seen to at once. Time is hastenin’ and the world is full of willin’ wimmen. Widder what do you say?
Wid. D. Wall, I have got kinder out the habit of marryin’, it comes kinder natural to me, and your linement looks a good deal like Doodle’s linement.
Peedick. Then you consent, widder. Wall we will be married a week from Sunday; we will be married Sunday so’s not to break into the week’s work. And I will turn off my hired girl, and you can come right to my house and do the housework, and help me what you can out doors, and tend to the milk of 14 cows and be perfectly happy.