“Did they say we must not come?”
“No, they didn’t say jest that,” says Josiah. “But they don’t want you.”
“Wall then, my deah boys and girls,” says she, scramblin’ into the sleigh. “Let us proceed onwards, if they did not say we should not come.”
Her load went on, for her brother, Shakespeare Bobbet, was the driver. How they got along I haint never enquired, and they don’t seem over free to talk about it. But they kep’ on havin’ ’em, most every night. Betsey Bobbet as I said was the leader, and she led ’em once into a house where they had the small pox, and once where they was makin’ preparations for a funeral. Somehow Tirzah and Thomas Jefferson seemed to be sick of ’em, and as for Josiah, though he didn’t say much, I knew he felt the more.
This coinsidense took place on Tuesday night, and the next week a Monday I had had a awful day’s work a washin’, and we had been up all night the night before with Josiah, who had the new ralegy in his back. We hadn’t one of us slept a wink the night before, and Thomas Jefferson and Tirzah Ann had gone to bed early. It had been a lowery day, and I couldn’t hang out my calico clothes, and so many of ’em was hung round the kitchen on lines and clothes bars, and nails, that Josiah and I looked as if we was a settin’ in a wet calico tent. And what made it look still more melancholy and sad, I found when I went to light the lamp, that the kerosene was all gone, and bein’ out of candles, I made for the first time what they call a “slut,” which is a button tied up in a rag, and put in a saucer of lard; you set fire to the rag, and it makes a light that is better than no light at all, jest as a slut is better than no woman at all; I suppose in that way it derived its name. But it haint a dazzlin’ light, nothin’ like so gay and festive as gas.
I, beat out with work and watchin’, thought I would soak my feet before I went to bed, and so I put some water into the mop pail, and sot by the stove with my feet in it. The thought had come to me after I got my night-cap on. Josiah sot behind the stove, rubbin’ some linament onto his back; he had jest spoke to me, and says he,
“I believe this linament makes, my back feel easier, Samantha, I hope I shall get a little rest to-night.”
Says I, “I hope so too, Josiah.” And jest as I said the words, without any warning the door opened, and in come what seemed to me at the time to be a hundred and 50 men, wimmen, and children, headed by Betsey Bobbet.
Josiah, so wild with horror and amazement that he forgot for the time bein’ his lameness, leaped from his chair, and tore so wildly at his shirt that he tore two pieces right out of the red flannel, and they shone on each shoulder of his white shirt like red stars; he then backed up against the wall between the back door and the wood box. I rose up and stood in the mop pail, too wild with amaze to get out of it, for the same reason heedin’ not my night-cap.
“We have come to suprize you,” says Betsey Bobbet, sweetly.