“Have you seen my husband?” says she, “can you tell a distracted wife—have you seen her husband Simon Slimpsey?”
She looked wild, as if she feared a catastrophe, and she cried out, loosin’ holt of her self control, in a firm constable like tone,
“He shall not escape me! I will telegraph to the next station house! I will have the creek dragged! the woods shall be scoured out!” says she.
“Be calm, and compose yourself,” says I frigidly, “Simon Slimpsey has gone up towards his house.”
She heaved a deep sithe of content, and triumph agin brooded down upon her eye-brow as she follered on after him.
I hadn’t no idee of callin’ on her, I wouldn’t, but the next day, Simon Slimpsey went by on his old white horse. It is a very dejected lookin’ horse in the face, besides carryin’ a couple of wash-boards in its sides, in the line of ribs. Thomas Jefferson says, “What gives it its mournful expression, it is mournin’ for the companions of its youth.” Says he, “you know Noah saved a pair of everything,” and says he, “his poor companion passed away several thousand years ago.” That boy worrys me, I don’t know what he is comin’ to. Slimpsey’s old horse haint more’n 35 or 40 years old, I don’t believe. They say Betsey is makin’ a pale blue cambric ridin’ dress, and is goin’ to ride him a horse back this fall. It don’t seem to me there would be much fun in it, he is so lame, besides havin’ a habit of fallin’ frequently with the blind staggers; howsomever it’s none of my business.
But as I was a sayin’ I stood silently in the door, to see old Slimpsey go by a horseback, and I thought to myself as I pensively turned out my tea grounds, (I was a gettin’ dinner) how much—how much it looks like a night mare that has broke out of its lawful night pastures, and is runnin’ away with a pale and harassed victim. So haggard and melancholy did they both look. And I sithed. I hadn’t much more’n got through sithin’, when he rode up, and says he,
“The seventh boy is worse, and the twin girls are took down with it, it would be a melankoly pleasure Miss Allen if you could go up.” I went.
Betsey had got the most of ’em to sleep, and was settin’ between a few cradles, and trundle beds, and high chairs all filled with measles, and a few mumps. Betsey’s teeth was out, and her tow frizzles lay on the table with a lot of paper—so I mistrusted she had been writin’ a poem. But she was now engaged in mendin’ a pair of pantaloons, the 8th pair—she told me—she had mended that day, for Simon Slimpsy was a poor man, and couldn’t afford to buy new ones. They was a hard and mournful lookin’ pair, and says I to her—in a tone in which pity and contempt was blended about half and half—