Says[Says] I: “Josiah Allen, if you don’t go to see Brother Bamber to-day, Brother Bamber shall come and see you. Did I ever expect to live,” says I, with a gloomy face, “to see my pardner rampagin’ round worse than any pirate that ever swum the seas, and shakin’ his fist, and actin’. I told you in the first on’t, Josiah Allen, to begin as you could hold out.”
“What if you did?” he yelled out. “Who thought we’d be borrowed out of house and home, and visited to death, and trampled over by cows, and roosted on; who s’posed they’d run me over with twin, and work me down to skin and bone, and foller me ’round tight to my heels all day, and sleep with me nights, and make dumb lunaticks of themselves? Dumb em!”
Says I in firm accents, “Josiah Allen, if you swear another swear to-day, I’ll part with you before Squire Baker.” Says I, “It betters it, don’t it, for you to start up and go to swearin’.”
Before Josiah could answer me a word, the door opened and in come Miss Spink’ses sister. They never none of ’em knocked, but dropped right down on us unexpected, like sun-strokes.
Says she, with a sort of a haughty, independent mean onto her (some like their cow’s mean), and directin’ her conversation to Josiah:
“Mr. Spink is goin’ to have his likeness took, to-day, and he would be glad to borrow the loan of your pantaloons and galluses. And he said if you didn’t want your pantaloons to go without your boots went with ’em, he guessed he’d wear your boots, as his had been heel-tapped and might show. And the two boys bein’ so took up with you, Mr. Allen, their Ma thought she’d let ’em come over here and sleep with you while they was gone; they didn’t know but they might stay several days to her folks’es, as they had heard of a number of parties that was goin’ to be held in that neighborhood. And knowin’ you hadn’t no little childern of your own, she thought it might be agreeable to you to keep the twin, while they was gone—and—and—”
She hadn’t got through with her speech, and I don’t know what she would have tackled us for next. But the door opened without no warnin’, and in come Miss Spink herself, and she said that “Spink had been urgin’ her to be took, too, and they kinder wanted to be took holt of hands, and they thought if Josiah and me had some kid gloves by us, they would borrow the loan of ’em; they thought it would give ’em a more genteel, aristocratic look. And as for the childern,” says she, “we shall go off feelin’ jest as safe and happy about ’em as if they was with us, they love dear Mr. Allen so.” And says she with a sweet smile, “I have lived on more places than I can think of hardly—we never have lived but a little while in a place, somehow the climates didn’t agree with us long at a time. But never, in all the places we have lived in, have we ever had such neighbors, never, never did we take such solid comfort a-neighborin’, as we do here.”
Josiah jumped right upon his feet, and shook his fist at her, and says he, in a more skareful tone than he had used as yet:
“You have got to stop it. If you don’t stop neighberin’ with me, I’ll know the reason why.”
Miss Spink looked skairt, and agitated awful, but I laid hands on him, and says I, “Be calm, Josiah Allen, and compose yourself down.”