“I ketched Josiah a-figgerin’.”
In the same quiet way, I got out three old palm-leaf fans, and put new bindin’s round the edges, and hemmed over the bottom of my old lawn dress, and I bought eleven yards of cheese bandage cloth at a outlay of five cents a yard, and colored it a soft gray with plum boughs. If I couldn’t wear calico in the winter, as I mistrusted I couldn’t from the agent’s talk, why, I laid out to be prepared. And if my apprehensions wuz futile, why, I laid out to make it into a comforter for my bed. Ten yards would make the comforter, and the odd yard I needed for a wipin’-cloth.
They wuz quite a long time a-settin’ up the furnace. It seemed to me to take a good while, but I wuzn’t used to the common behavior of furnaces, and didn’t know but it wuz one of their habits to be a good while a-bein’ sot up.
Of course, Josiah bein’ a man, and bein’ round with the workmen more, and hearin’ more of the skairful talk of that agent, about the heat that wuz soon a-goin’ to pour onto us, it wuz nateral that he should get skairter than I wuz, and it wuz on the very afternoon that they finished settin’ it up, and I s’poze the agent had acted very skairful, and also the men that wuz a-helpin’ set it up (for of course it wuz nateral that they should all be linked together in their talk about it).
It wuz that very afternoon, along towards night, that I overheard Josiah, out by the gate, a-tryin’ to sell his clothes, all his thick ones. And I walked right out bareheaded, and interfered.
But Josiah sez, “What will I ever want of ’em ag’in?”
And I sez, “You act like a luny. Hain’t you got to go out any more to mill or to meetin’?”
But sez he, “I am only sellin’ them that I wear round the house winters.”
But I sez, “Do you desist imegiatly,” sez I. “If the clothes hain’t wanted, I need ’em for carpet-rags.”