I told her “I hadn’t turned my mind much that way, for I hadn’t no idee of goin’ into the desert business, I wouldn’t buy one any way, and I wouldn’t take one as a gift if I had got to settle down, and live on it. But from what I had heard Thomas Jefferson read about it, I thought the desert of Sarah was about as roomy and raised as much sand to the acre as any of ’em.”
Says she, turnin’ the subject, “will you have pie or puddin’.”
I couldn’t see then, and I have thought about it lots sense, I don’t see what started her off onto Gography all of a sudden.
After dinner I thought I would rest a spell. My talk with that female lecturer had tired me out. Principle is dreadful tuckerin’ to any body, when you make it a stiddy business. I had rather wash, any time, than to go off on a tower of it as I was. So I went to my room and sot down real comfortable. But I hadn’t sot more’n a minute and a half, when Betsey Bobbet came, and nothin’ to do, but I must go to Stewarts’es store with her. I hung back at first, but then I happened to think, if Alexander should hear—as of course he would—that I had been to the village and hadn’t been to his shop, he would have reason to feel hurt. Alexander is a real likely man, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelin’s, and it haint my way to want to slight anybody. And then I had a little tradin’ I wanted to do. So take it all together, I finally told Betsey I would go with her.
ALEXANDER’S STORE.
I had heard it was considerable of a store, but good land! it was bigger than all the shops of Jonesville put together, and 2 or 3 10 acre lots, and a few meetin’ housen. But I wouldn’t have acted skairt, if it had been as big as all Africa. I walked in as cool as a cowcumber. We sot down pretty nigh to the door and looked round a spell. Of all the sights of folks there was a comin’ in all the time, and shinin’ counters all down as fur as we could see, and slick lookin’ fellers behind every one, and lots of boys runnin’ round, that they called “Cash.” I says to Betsey,
“What a large family of boys Mr. Cash’es folks have got, and they must some of ’em be twins, they seem to be about of a size.”
I was jest thinkin’ in a pityin way of their mother: poor Mrs. Cash, and how many pantaloons she would have to put new seats into, in slidin’ down hill time, when Betsey says to me,