“Wall,” sez he, triumphantly, “come down suller, and I will prove it.”
So I tottered down suller (for what will not a wife do to please her pardner?), and there, sure enough, wuz a iron rim which had been broke long ago to all appearance, and mended with old wire. And the big part did indeed look in shape like a old potash-kettle with some places in the side that had been patched up with cement.
I looked down on it pensively and sez,—
“And that is what we wuz to pay that big hefty price for. That is what wuz a-goin’ to give us sunstrokes in the winter, and prostrations from too fervid heat.”
A by-stander a-standin’ by remarked tersely,—
“All it is good for is old iron.”
But Josiah sez, “Wall, I’ll bet George Washington made durned good potash in it. I’ll bet it wuz a good kettle in its day.”
Sez I, “Josiah Allen, cease such talk. I should think we had suffered enough with the little thing, without lyin’ about it.”
But sez he, firmly, “I believe every word I say, and I don’t say a thing I can’t prove. That is George Washington’s potash-kettle.”
I sithed, and turned silently away, for I knew words wuz vain.