“Wall,” says I, “I can’t advise you. I wouldn’t marry, if I thought it was a goin’ to kill ten or a dozen; and I wouldn’t marry anyway, unless I got a chance.”
“Chance!” says he haughtily. “Why, there haint a woman in the country but what would jump to have me; that is,” says he in a reasonable tone, “if they wasn’t too old to jump, or wasn’t disabled in some way, rheumatiz, or sunthin, or sprains. They all want me.”
“Why,” says I, tryin’ to chirk him up, and make him feel better, “I thought it was right the other way. I thought you had got the mitten more’n a dozen times. There was Polly Bamber”—
“Oh, well. Polly Bamber loved me to distraction. She tried to conceal it from me. She refused me, thinkin’ it would make me fiercer to marry her. But she got fooled. I only asked her three times. She was waitin’ for the fourth, and I spose she was as disapinted as a girl ever was. I was sorry for her; my heart fairly ached for her; but I had a man’s dignity to keep up, and I left her.”
“Wall, there was Betsey Gowdey.”
“Betsey would have had me in a minute, if it hadn’t been for influences that was brought to bear on her. She just as good as told me so. I s’pose she felt awfully to lose me; but she bore up under it better than I thought she would. I thought like as not she would break completely down under it.”
“Wall,” says I, tryin’ my best to chirk him up, “there was Mahala Grimshaw, and Martha Ann Snyder, and Jane Boden, and Serena Rumsey, and Serepta Mandagool.”
“Them girls was sorry enough, when it was too late. They lost me, every one of them girls did, by puttin’ on airs and pretendin’ not to want me. Pretendin’ to make fun of me, jest for an outside show. I see right through it. But I took ’em at their word, and when they said they wouldn’t have me, I jest left ’em, and paid no attention to what they suffered after I left. Sometimes I have thought that mebby I was too harsh with ’em, to punish ’em so; but I did it, and I’d do it agin if it was to do over. They no need to have been so deceitful. They might expect to suffer for it, and I am glad they did.”
“There was Nabby Ellis,” says I dreamily.