“Why, no!” She couldn’t really tell what particular hurt it done, and she rubbed the teapot a little slower and more reasonable.
“Wall,” says I, coolly, “then let her feel. It probable does her some good, or else she wouldn’t tackle the job.”
And jest as I had argued with Tirzah Ann about she that was Keturah Allen, jest so I had argued, and did argue about Miss Skidmore. But I couldn’t convince her—she stuck to it.
“It does look so poor, mother, so fairly sickish, to see anybody that hain’t got nothin’ under the sun to make ’em feel proud, put on such airs, and try to be so exclusive and haughty.”
And says I, “Such folks have to, Tirzah Ann.” Says I, “You’ll find, as a general thing, that they are the very ones who do it. They are the very ones who put on the most airs, and they do it because they have to. Why,” says I, “divin’ so deep into filosify as I have doven, it is jest as plain to me as anything can be, that if anybody has got uncommon goodness, or intellect, or beauty, or wealth, and an assured position, they don’t have to put on the haughtiness and airs that them do that hain’t got nothin’. They don’t have to; they have got sunthin’ to hold ’em up, they can stand without airs.”
I had talked it all over with Tirzah Ann lots of times, but it hadn’t done her a mite of good, as I could see, for I hadn’t got through reveryin’ on the subject, nor begun to, when she up and says agin:
“Miss Skidmore says that all the high aristocracy of Jonesville, if they are aristokrits,” says Tirzah Ann—“that is the way she pronounces it, they say she can’t read hardly,—if they are aristokrits, and not imposters, they will go away during the summer for a change. And I say, if a change is necessary for her and old Skidmore, why Whitfield and I have got to have a change, if we die in the attempt.”
VIEW OF JONESVILLE.
“A change!” says I, in low axents, a lookin’ round the charmin’, lovely prospect;—the clean, bright cottage, with its open doors and windows, and white ruffled curtains wavin’ on the cool breeze; the green velvet grass, the bright flower beds, the climbing, blossoming vines, the birds singin’ in the shady branches overhead, and in the orchard; the blue lake lyin’ so calm and peaceful in the distance, shining over the green hills and forests; and the wide, cloudless sky bending over all like a benediction.