Says I, “Josiah I have been a mewsin’ on the onstiddiness, and wickedness of the world all day, and now that whip is gone. What is the world a comin’ to, Josiah Allen?”
Josiah is a man that don’t say much, but things wear on him. His face looked several inches longer than it usially did, and he answered in a awful depressted tone:
“I don’t know, Samantha, but I do know, that I am as hungry as a bear.”
“Wall,” says I, soothingly, “I thought you would be, supper’s all on the table.”
He stepped in, and the very minute that man ketched sight of that cheerful room, and that supper table, that man smiled. And it wasn’t a sickly, deathly smile either, it was a smile of deep inward joy and contentment. And says he in a sweet tone, “it seems to me you have got a awful good supper to-night, Samantha.”
As I see that smile, and looked into that honest beamin’ face, I jest turned out them gloomy forebodin’s about him, out of my heart, the whole caboodle of ’em, and shet the door in their faces. But I controlled my voice, till it sounded like a perfect stranger to me, and says I:
“Don’t I always get good suppers, Josiah Allen?”
“Yes,” says he, “and good dinners and breakfess’es, too. I will say this for you, Samantha, there haint a better cook in Jonesville, than you be, nor a woman that makes a pleasanter home.” And he went on placidly, as he stood there with his back to the fire a warmin’ him, a lookin’ serenely round that bright warm room, and ont’ that supper table.
“There haint no place quite so good as home, is there, Samantha? haint supper about ready?”