DOLLY VARDEN.
He pretended to turn it off with a laugh. But I know a guilty conscience when I see it as quick as anybody. I haint one to break a bruised reed more than once into. And my spectacles beamed more mildly onto him, and I says to him in a kind but firm manner.
“Young man, if I was in your place, I would drop Dolly Varden’s acquaintance.” Says I, “I advise you for your own good, jest as I would Thomas Jefferson.”
“Who is Thomas Jefferson?” says he.
Says I, in a cautious tone, “He is Josiah Allen’s child, by his first wife, and the own brother of Tirzah Ann.”
I then laid my hand on a piece of choklate ground calico, and says I, “This suits me pretty well, but I have my doubts,” says I, examinin’ it closer through my specs, “I mistrust it will fade some. What is your opinion?” says I, speakin’ to a elegantly dressed woman by my side, who stood there with her rich silk dress a trailin’ down on the floor.
“Do you suppose this calico will wash mom?”
I was so busy a rubbin’ the calico to see if it was firm cloth, that I never looked up in her face at all. But when I asked her for the third time, and she didn’t speak, I looked up in her face, and I haint come so near faintin’ sence I was united to Josiah Allen. That woman’s head was off!