“Betsey are you happy?”
“I am at rest,” says she, “more at rest than I have been for years.”
“Are you happy?” says I, lookin’ keenly at her.
“I feel real dignified,” says she, “There isn’t no use in a woman trying to be dignified till she is married, for she can’t. I have tried it and I know. I can truly say Josiah Allen’s wife, that I neveh knew what dignity was, until one week ago last Sunday night at half past seven in the evenin’,” says she, turnin’ over the pantaloons, and attactin’ a ghastly hole of about 7 by 9 dimensions in the left knee.
I sot silently in my chair like a statute, while she remarked thus, and as she paused, I says to her agin, fixing my mild but stern grey eyes upon her weary form, bendin’ over the dilapitated folds of the 8th.
“Are you happy Betsey?”
“I have got something to lean on,” says she.
I thought of the fragile form bendin’ over the lean and haggard horse, and totterin’ away, withered by age and grief, in the swallow tailed coat, and says I in a pityin’ accent,
“Don’t lean too hard Betsey.”
“Why?” says she.