“Don’t give up so, Simon Slimpsey, I hate to see you lookin’ so gloomy and depressted.”
“It is the awful detarmination these lines breathe forth that appauls me,” says he. “I have seen it in another. Betsey Bobbet reminds me dreadfully of another. And I don’t want to marry again Miss Allen, I don’t want to,” says he lookin’ me pitifully in the face, “I didn’t want to marry the first time, I wanted to be a bachelder, I think they have the easiest time of it, by half. Now there is a friend of mine, that never was married, he is jest my age, or that is, he is only half an hour younger, and that haint enough difference to make any account of, is it Miss Allen?” says he in a pensive, and enquirin’ tone.
“No,” says I in a reasonable accent. “No, Simon Slimpsey, it haint.”
“Wall that man has always been a bachelder, and you ought to see what a head of hair he has got, sound at the roots now, not a lock missing. I wanted to be one, she, my late wife, came and kept house for me and married me. I lived with her for 18 years, and when she left me,” he murmured with a contented look, “I was reconciled to it. I was reconciled for sometime before it took place. I don’t want to say anything against nobody that haint here, but I lost some hair by my late wife,” says he puttin’ his hand to his bald head in a abstracted way, as gloomy reflections crowded onto him, “I lost a good deal of hair by her, and I haint much left as you can see,” says he in a meloncholy way “I did want to save a lock or two for my children to keep, as a relict of me. I have 13 children as you know, countin’ each pair of twins as two, and it would take a considerable number of hairs to go round.” Agin he paused overcome by his feelin’s, I knew not what to say to comfort him, and I poured onto him a few comfortin’ adjectives.
“Mebby you are borrowin’ trouble without a cause Simon Slimpsey! with life there is hope! it is always the darkest before daylight.” But in vain. He only sighed mournfully.
SIMON OVERCOME.
“She’ll get round me yet Miss Allen, mark my words, and when the time comes you will think of what I told you.” His face was most black with gloomy aprehension, as he reflected agin. “You see if she don’t get round me!” and a tear began to flow.
I turned away with instinctive delicacy and sot my pan of onions in the sink, but when I glanced at him agin it was still flowin’. And I said to him in a tone of about two thirds pity and one comfort,