DON’T TAKE BARTER.
The clerk said “he guessed Mr. Stewart wasn’t sufferin’ for ’em.”
“Well,” says I in a dignified way, “you can do as you are a mind to about takin’ ’em, but they are colored in a good indigo blue dye, they haint pusley color, and they are knit on honor, jest as I knit Josiah’s.”
“Who is Josiah?” says the clerk.
Says I, a sort of blindly, “He is the husband of Josiah Allen’s wife.”
I would’t say right out, that I was Josiah Allen’s wife, because I wanted them socks and mittens to stand on their own merits, or not at all. I wasn’t goin’ to have ’em go, jest because one of the first wimmen of the day knit ’em. Neither was I goin’ to hang on, and tease him to take ’em. I never said another word about his buyin’ ’em, only mentioned in a careless way, that “the heels was run.” But he didn’t seem to want ’em, and I jest folded ’em up, and in a cool way put ’em into my pocket. I then asked to look at his calicos, for I was pretty near decided in my own mind to get a apron, for I wasn’t goin’ to have him think that all my property lay in that pair of socks and mittens.
He told me where to go to see the calicos, and there was another clerk behind that counter. I didn’t like his looks a bit, he was real uppish lookin’. But I wasn’t goin’ to let him mistrust that I was put to my stumps a bit. I walked up as collected lookin’ as if I owned the whole caboodle of ’em, and New York village, and Jonesville, and says I,
“I want to look at your calicos.”
“What prints will you look at?” says he, meanin’ to put on me.