Wall, I gin my shawl a closter wrop round my chilly frame, and pinted my frigid forefinger towards the empty coal-ben, and sez,—
“If four tons of coal hain’t a test, what do you call one?”
And sez I, “If that hain’t a test, there is a woman a-perishin’ out there now, a-settin’ on the regester: bring her in for a test if you want another.”
But no; one of ’em recommended givin’ her whiskey to keep her temperature up till she got the carpet down.
But Josiah rousted up at that, and said “he wuzn’t goin’ to stand the expense of keepin’ folkses heat up with brandy.” (That man is close.) And I repudiated the idee, and said, “I put more faith in soapstuns and woollen shawls.”
And I sez ag’in, in eloquent axents, “Take out that furnace, and put in a bigger one, and I will move in and test it.”
And then they said “they wouldn’t.”
And we said “we wouldn’t.”
And then the man threw some hints at us about the law.
And then Tirzah Ann throwed some back at him, about its not bein’ a new furnace.