“Fetch him on! Bring him to me instantly! and let me argue with him, and convert him.”
I s’pose my tone and my mean skairt her, she not knowin’ what powerful performances had been a performin’ in my mind. And I heard that she went right from our house and reported that I was after the Elder. So little is worldly judgment to be relied upon. But nobody believed it, and if they had, I shouldn’t have cared, no more than I should have cared for the murmurin’ of the summer breeze. When the conscience is easy, the mind is at rest. I knew there was three that knew the truth on’t: the Lord, Elder Judas Wart, and myself. I count Josiah and me as one, which is lawful, though Josiah says that I am the one the biggest heft of the time. He said “he made calculations when he married me, when we was jined together as one, that he would be that one.”
And I told him, “Man’s calculations was blindin’, and oft deceivin’.”
I said it in a jokin’ way. I let him be the “one” a good deal of the time, and he knows it.
But, as I was a sayin’, them three that knew it was all that was necessary to my comfort and peace of mind.
Josiah looked sad and depressted, and I knew, for I see old Bobbet leanin’ over the barnyard fence while he was a milkin’, and I knew they had been talkin’ over the news. And when he come in with his second pail-full of milk, lookin’ so extra depressted, my mean was some colder, probable about like ice cream, only not sweet; no, not at all sweet—quite the reverse.
BOBBET AND JOSIAH TALKIN’.
After Miss Bobbet’s departure, the night that ensued and followed on was fearful and agonizin’. What to do with Josiah Allen I knew not. But I made my mind up not to tackle him on the subject then, but wait till I was more calm and composed down. I also thought I would do better to take the daylight to it. So I treated him considerable the same as my common run of treatment towards him was, only a little more cool—not cold as ice, but coolish.
But oh! what emotions goared me that night, as I lay on my goose-feather pillow, with Josiah by my side a groanin’ in his sleep frequent and mournful. He couldn’t keep awake, that man couldn’t, not if all the plagues of Egypt was a plaguin’ him, as I often remarked to him.