“Yes, if a young man like me is unprincipled enough to go headlong into wimmen’s company without lookin’ where he is goin’, without actin’ offish and cold to ’em, why, before that man knows it, he is a wadin’ through goar. Bleedin’ hearts lay round him on every side a bleedin’. Why don’t other young men think of these things? Why hain’t they more careful, more offish?”
Says I, with feelin’, “That’s so, why hain’t they? The offisher some men be, the more I think on ’em.” And I looked longin’ly at the path down to the gate, and the road to Jonesville.
“Yes, you know what actin’ on principle means. That is why I respect you, confide in you.”
“Then you don’t think you can carry the indigo?” says I, turnin’ to go in.
“No,” says he, firm as marble, and as sot as that stun. “I’d love to accommodate you, but I dassent. When I think of the fate of Sofier, when I think of the deadly blows my conscience dealt to me every minute, as I drove her hearse to the buryin’-ground—then I feel as if I had almost ruther lose ten cents than go through it agin with Marier. I feel that I must not be resky, and do anything to ensnare her affections.”
“Good land!” says I, “indigo won’t be likely to ensnare ’em, will it?”
“Other men might handle it safe, men with less attractions than I have got, but I can’t, I dassent.”
And I wouldn’t demean myself by urgin’ him another word. And I went into the house, and he started off.
Wall, as I was a sayin’, Kitty had been gone two weeks, the day Nathan and Cassandra visited me, and this letter from her, brought in to me while I was a gettin’ the dinner onto the table, brought news that was startlin’ and agitatin’ in the extreme. I was jest a stirrin’ some sweet cream and butter together over the stove, havin’ a fresh salmon trout for dinner, and Josiah bein’ fond of that kind of gravy to eat with it, and Nathan bein’ such a clever creeter, offered to stir it for me, while I read the letter. And I was so anxious to git the news, that I let him do it, though, the stove bein’ so hot, take it with that and his burnin’ blushes, it made a pretty hot time for him.
But the news was this: Kitty was married. But the curiousest and most agitatin’ part of the news was, the old gentleman, Mark’s father, had got after Kitty’s mother. He went to give her a scoldin’, and fell in love with her on the spot. Like Hamen, he got hung on his own gallowses—went to smite her, and got smit himself, awful. So he courted her up violent and powerful, and they all got married the same day.