“Widder Bump!”
And that is the livin’ truth, and I have always been called truthful, and don’t expect to take up lyin’ now, at my age. How many more times he said it, while I was a sleepin’ peacefully by his side, I can’t say. But them two times I heard and counted, and my feelin’s as I lay there and heard them awful words can’t never be told nor sung; no, a tune can’t be made curious enough to sing ’em in.
Then I gin up, fully gin up, that sunthin’ was wrong. That a great mystery was hangin’ over my Josiah and the widder, or to one of ’em, or to somebody, or to sunthin’.
Oh the feelin’s that I felt, as I lay there and heard them words. I wuzn’t jealous that I will contend for; but what words them was for a affectionate, lovin’ pardner to hear from the lips of a sleepin’ Josiah.
“Widder Bump!”
I was not jealous. I would scorn to be. There wuzn’t a jealous hair in my foretop, and I knew it, or my back hair. And I knew I was better lookin’ than the widder, though she was wholesome lookin’.
MEASURED BY THE WIDDER.
She was the widder of Sampson Bump; he died with collery morbeus, and she moved to Jonesville and set up a tailoress shop, and had been called likely. Though the wimmen of Jonesville had gi’n in that their husbands never had so many clothes made in the same length of time, and a good many of the men had got scolded considerable by their wives for runnin’ through with their property, and goin’ so deep into their store-clothes. But the men had all gi’n in that ready-made clothes ripped so it was a perfect moth to buy ’em, and it was fur cheaper to hire ’em made by hand. And Josiah had started up about the middle of winter, and wanted to have her measure him for a vest, and get a new overcoat made. Josiah Allen didn’t need no vest, and I put my foot right down on it. But I had her come to the house and make the overcoat, and while she was there I run a splinter under my finger-nail, and was disabled, and I kep’ her a week to do housework.
As I say, she had always been called likely, though she seemed to be sort o’ shaky and tottlin’ in her religion. She had been most everything sense she come to Jonesville, not quite 2 years. She jined the Methodists first, then the ’Piscopals, then the Universalers, and then the Camelites. And I s’posed at this present time she was a Camel. I had hearn’ talk that she was a leanin’ towards the Mormons, but I had always made a practice of disputin’ of it, knowin’ how hard it was for good lookin’ wimmen to get along without bein’ slandered by other wimmen. I always dispised such littleness, and so I had come out openly and stood up for her, and called her a Camel. But I learnt a lesson in this very affair. I learnt to be more mejum than I had been, and I thought I knew every crook and turn in mejumness, I had always been such a master hand for it. But in dispisin’ littleness and jealousy in other wimmen, and tryin’ to rise above it, I had riz too fur. She wuzn’t a Camel! And while the other wimmen had been spiteful and envious, I had been a lyin’—though entirely unbeknown to me, and I don’t s’pose I shall ever be hurt for it.