TIRZAH ANN FLIRTS WITH A MAN.
You see, Miss Skidmore wantin’ to appear fashionable and genteel, and do as other genteel wimmen did, flirted with men. And I know jest as well as I want to know that Tirzah Ann did, not wantin’ to be outdone. I know she and Whitfield quarreled dretfully, for the first time in their lives,—that I had right from Tirzah Ann’s own mouth. But she didn’t tell me what it was about. She looked sort o’ meachin’, and turned the subject, and I hain’t one to pump. But I s’pose, from what they both told me, that they come pretty nigh partin’. And I know, jest as well as if I see her at it, that Tirzah Ann bein’ so ambitious, and not wantin’ to be outdone by Miss Skidmore, went to flirtin’, and I mistrust it was with old Skidmore himself. I know he and Whitfield don’t speak. Tirzah Ann never could bear the sight of him, but I s’pose she wanted to gaul Miss Skidmore.
Oh! such doin’s, such doin’s! It worked up me and Josiah dretfully. As I told him, “where would their morals have been, if they had rested and recreated much longer?”
And he groaned aloud, and said what gauled him the worst was to think of the piles and piles of money they had throwed away. Says he: “It will cramp ’em for months and months,”—and it will.
MISS BOBBET LETS THE CAT OUT.
My companion Josiah havin’ bought a quantity of fresh fish, I thought I would carry one over to Miss Betsey Slimpsy,—she that was Betsey Bobbet,—thinkin’ mebby it would taste good to her. Betsey hain’t well. Some think she is in a gallopin’ consumption, but I don’t. I think it is her workin’ so hard, and farin’ so hard. She has to support the family herself, almost entirely; she don’t have enough to eat a good deal of the time, so folks say; she hain’t got any clothes fit to wear; and she has to be such a slave, and work so awful hard, that it don’t seem as if she is half as bright as she used to be. As she says, if it wasn’t for the dignity she got by bein’ married, it didn’t seem as if she could keep up. But that, she says, is a great comfort to her.
But she looks bad. She don’t get no sleep at all, she says, or none to speak of. Simon’s horrors are worse than I ever dremp’ horrors could be. They are truly horrible. Every night he pounds on the headboard, yells awful, prances round, and kicks. Why, Betsey says, and I believe her, that she is black and blue most the hull time, jest from kicks. I am sorry for Betsey.
A PRESENT FOR BETSEY.