“I am glad Miss Woodhull is engaged to be married, it takes a load off’en my mind,” says I, “I presume she will settle doun and make a real likely woman.”
At that minute, a door opened right across the hall, and a man come out and shet it agin, and he ketched right holt of my arm, the first thing, and says he,
“Come, Marier Jane, or Marier Ann,” says he, “I can’t really call to mind your precise name this minute, but I think it is Marier any way, or mebby it is Mary Ann. Come, Mary Ann, it is time to be a goin’ home.”
I looked at him with almost fearful dignity, and I says to him with a air so cold that he must have thought it blowed off of Greenland’s icy mountain,
“Leggo of my arm!”
But he never budged a inch, and I jest raised my umberell, and says I, “If you don’t leggo of my arm, I’ll make you leggo.”
Then he leggo. And he stood back a little, but he looked piercin’ly and searchin’ly into my face, and says he,
“You are my wife, haint you?”
Then again I spoke with that fearful dignity, and that cold and icy air, 50 degrees under Mr. Zero it was, if it was a degree.
“No Sir! I am proud and happy to say I am not your wife, I am Josiah Allen’s wife.”