He said he had been ready for a week, which indeed he had, for truly the price he had to pay for our two boards was enormous; I never see nor heerd of such costly boards before. So we started about half-past eight o’clock, calculatin’ to git home the second day, for we was goin’ home the shortest way, stayin’ one night to a tarvern.
And the next night about sundown my Josiah and me arrove home from the Sentinal, and it seemed as if old Nater had been a lottin’ on our comin’ and fixed up for us and made a fuss, everything looked so uncommon beautiful and pleasant. There had been a little shower that afternoon, and the grass in the door yard looked green and fresh as anything. The sweet clover in the meadow made the air smell good enough to eat if you could have got holt of it; our bees was a comin’ home loaded down with honey, and the robins in the maples and the trees over in the orchard sang jest as if they had been practicin’ a piece a purpose to meet us with, it was perfectly beautiful. And the posy beds and the mornin’ glories at the winders and the front porch, and the curtains at our bed-room winder, and the door step, and everything, looked so good to me that I turned and says to my pardner with a happy look:
“Home is the best place on earth, haint it Josiah Allen?” says I, “towers are pleasant to go off on, but they are tuckerin, especially high towers of principle such as I have been off a performin’ on.”
But Josiah looked fractious and worrysome, and says he:
“What I want to know is, what we are goin’ to have for supper; there haint no bread nor nothin’, and I’d as lives eat bass-wood chips and shingles as to eat Betsey Slimpsey’s cookin’.”
But I says in tender tones, for I knew I could soothe him down instantly:
“How long will it take your pardner, Josiah Allen, to make a mess of cream biscuit, and broil some of that nice steak we jest got to Jonesville, and mash up some potatoes? And you know,” says I in the same gentle axents, “there is good butter and cheese and honey and canned peaches and everything right in the suller.”
All the while I was speakin’, my Josiah’s face begun to look happier and happier, and more peaceful and resigned, and as I finished, and he got down to help me out, he looked me radiantly and affectionately in the face, and says he:
“It is jest as you say, Samantha; there’s no place like home.”
HOME AFFAIRS