“Anything but sage tea, I can’t bear that.”
But then I happened to think I see they was all a drinkin’ coffee round me, I knew they was by the smell. And I thought mebby from her speakin’ to me in that way that she meant to give me a little hint that Miss Aster was out of store tea, and says I, kinder loud for she had started off. “If Miss Aster is short on it for store tea, she needn’t fuss for me, she needn’t borry any on my account, I can drink sage tea if I set out to.”
But I thought to myself, that I had rather have brought a drawin’ of tea in my pocket clear from Jonesville, than to have gone without it; while I was jest thinkin’ this, Jonothan Beans’es ex-wife came back with a first rate cup of tea, strong enough to bear up a egg.
The more I looked round and see the droves of hungry folks, the sorrier I felt for Miss Aster. And I spoke to J. Beans’es ex-wife as she brought me my last vittles, says I, “If there is a woman on the face of the hull earth I am sorry for, it is Miss Aster, how on earth can she ever cook enough to fill this drove of folks?” says I, “How can she ever stand up under it?” And carried almost away with my sympathy, I says to Jonothan Beans’es ex-wife,
“You tell Miss Aster from me that she needn’t make no fuss about the dinner at all, I will eat a picked up dinner, I had jest as lives as not, I didn’t come down here to put her out and make her any trouble.”
I heard a little noise to one side of me, and I looked round and there was a feller and two girls a snickerin’ and laughin’, right at me. They was rigged out awful fashionable, but I guess their brains had run to their hair mostly, the girls on their heads, and his’en on his face, such sights of it. But I don’t believe they was very well off, for every one of ’em had broke one eye off’en their spectacles, and they lifted up that one eye, and looked at me through it, a laughin’ at the same time as if they would split. But it didn’t put me out a bit, I glared back at ’em, as sharp as they did at me, and says I,
“Laugh away if you want to, I know what it is to cook over a hot cook stove in the summer time, it tuckers anybody out, even if they have got good help, and I am sorry for Miss Aster.”
They snickered worse than ever, and I got mad, and says I,
“I don’t wonder you laugh! there haint no more pity and humanity in the whole lot on you, than there is in a three tined pitchfork, and no wonder when you see somebody that has got a little pity and generosity into ’em, it is more of a amusement and novelty to you than a circus would be.”