Just at this minute the hired girl come in, and said supper was on the table, and we all went out to eat it. Miss Jones said there wasn’t anything on the table fit to eat, and she was afraid we couldn’t make out—but it was a splendid supper, fit for the Zaar of Rushy.
We hadn’t more’n got up from the supper table, and got back into the parlor, when we heard a knock onto the front door, and Miss Jones went and opened it, and who of all the live world should walk in but the minister! The faces of the wimmen as he entered would have been a study for Michael Angelico, or any of them old painters. Miss Jones was that flustrated that she asked him the first thing to take his bunnet off, and then she bethought herself, and says she, ‘How’s your Ma?’ before she had sat him a chair or anything. But he looked as pleasant and composed as ever, though his eyes kinder laughed. And he thanked her and told her he left his mother the day before a good deal better, and then he turned to Maggy Snow, and says he,
“I have come after you Miss Maggy, my wife come home this mornin’ and was so anxious to see you that I told her as I had business past your house this afternoon, I would call for you as I went home, and your mother told me you were here. I think I know why she wants to see you so very much now. She is so proud of our boy, she can’t wait till——”
“Your boy,” gasped nine wimmen to once.
“Yes,” says he smilin’ more pleasant than I ever seen him. “I know you will wish me joy, we have a nice little boy, little Hugh, for my wife has named him already for her father, he is a fine healthy little fellow almost two months old.”
It wouldn’t have done no good for Michael Angelico or Mr. Ruben, to have been there then, nor none of the rest of them we read about, for if they had their palates’es and easels’es all ready, they never could have done justice to the faces of the Dagget girls, and Betsey Bobbet. And as for Miss Deacon Dobbins, her spectacles fell off unnoticed and she opened her mouth so wide, it was very doubtful to me if she could ever shut it again. Maggy Snow’s face shone like a Cherubim, and as for me, I can truly say I was happy enough to sing the Te Deus.
