She bust right out cryin’, took out her snuff handkerchief, and rubbed her eyes with both hands, her elbo’s standin’ out most straight; she took it awful.
“Oh Doodle! Doodle!” says she, “what if you had lived to hear your relict laughed at about marryin’ to another man. What agony it would have brung to your dear linement; I can’t bear it, I can’t. Oh! when I think how he worshipped the ground I walked on; and the neighbors said he did; they said he thought more of the ground than he did of me: but he didn’t, he worshipped us both. And what would his feelin’s be if he’d lived to see his Widder laughed at about another man.”
She sobbed like a infant babe; and I come to the buttery door with my nutmeg grater in my hand, and winked at Thomas Jefferson two or three times, not to say another word to hurt her feelin’s. They was real firm and severe winks and he knew I meant ’em, and he took up one of his law books and went to readin’, and I went back to makin’ my fruit cake and cherry pies. But I kep’ one eye out at her, not knowin’ what trouble of mind would lead her into; she kep’ her snuff handkerchief over her eyes and groaned bad for nearly nine moments I should judge, and then she spoke out from under it:
“Do you think Solomon Cypher is good lookin’ Tommy?”
“Oh! from fair to middlin’,” says Thomas J.
And then she bust out again: “Oh what a linement my Doodle had on him; how can I think of any other man. I can’t! I can’t!” And she groaned the hardest she had yet. And I come to the buttery door again, and shook my head and winked at Thomas Jefferson again, severer and more reprovin’ winks than they was before, and more of ’em; and he, feelin’ sorry I guess for what he had done, got up and said he guessed he’d go out to the barn, and help his father. Josiah was puttin’ some new stanchils in the stable.
Thomas J. hadn’t much more’n got to the barn, and I had finished my cake, and had jest got my hands into the pie crust a mixin’ it up, when there come a knock to the door, and my hands bein’ in the dough, the Widder stopped groanin’ for the time bein’, and opened it. It was Solomon Cypher himself come to borry my bombazeen dress and crape veil for some of the mourners. Bein’ engaged and busy, I thought I wouldn’t go out till I had finished my pies; he and the Widder bein’ some acquainted. He hadn’t sot but a few minutes when he spoke up, and says he:
“This is a dretful blow to me, Widder;” and he hit himself a knock in the stomach so you could hear it all over the house—for he has got so used to public life and its duties, that he makes gestures right along every day, good enough for anybody, and this was; it would have knocked anybody down that wasn’t in the practice.
“A hard blow,” says he peltin’ himself again right in his breast.
“Yes,” says sister Doodle, puttin’ her snuff handkerchief to her eyes. “I can feel to sympathize with you, I know what feelin’s I felt when I lost Doodle.”