I said I knew by my new head-dress. I well remember I had wore it that afternoon for the first time, some expectin’ very genteel company, and wantin’ to look well. But the company didn’t come, and Kellup Cobb did. He come to bring home a cent he had borrowed the night before at the missionary meetin’ to send for his annual gift to the heathens. And he noticed my new cap in a minute. He looked witherin’ and overbearin’ at it, and in a sort of a back-handed, underground way, that I can’t bear, nor never could, he begun to throw hints at me about it. About married women and members of meetin’-housen spendin’ their money in such extravagance, when they might spend it in spreadin’ the Gospel in benighted lands—and about how awful wicked it was to be so dressy—and et cetery, et cetery.
My cap wuz middlin’-foamin’ lookin’. I couldn’t deny it, and didn’t try to. It wuzn’t what you might call over and above dressy, but it was handsome, and very nice. The ribbin on it cost me 18 pence per yard, and the cap contained two yards and a half; it was very nice. But none too good for me, my Josiah said.
He is what you may call a close man at a bargain. (Tight, would perhaps be a better word to express his situation.) But he loves dearly to see me look beautiful. And he is very gay in his tastes; red is his favorite color, and the more fiery shades of yellow; he would be glad to see me dressed in these tints all the time. But I don’t encourage him in the idee. Not that I think one color is wickeder than another, but they don’t seem to be becomin’ to my style and age.
Now this new head dress, I had picked it out and selected it with my pardner by my side, and he whispered to me loud, as I was a-selectin’ of it: “If you have got to have a new cap, Samantha, for mercy’s sake get a red one.”
But I whispered to him that I should look like a fool with a red cap on, and to keep still.
THE NEW HEAD-DRESS.
And then he whispered agin, in a more anxious tone: “Wall then, for pity’s sake do get yeller, or sunthin’ that has got a little color to it. Black! black! the whole of the time; you look jest like a mourner.”
I had a black one on my hand at that time, admirin’ of it, and most settled on it. But Josiah’s mean was such as I was a-settlin’, that I, as a devoted pardner, and a woman of principle, compromised the matter with Josiah and Duty, by purchasin’ one trimmed with a sort of a pinky, lilock color. It was very becomin’ to me. But I won’t deny, as a woman who is bred to tellin’ the truth, and not gin to deceit and coverin’ up,—I won’t deny that the first time I tried that head-dress on after I got home, I had my curious feelin’s. I thought mebby it was wrong for me to buy such costly ribbin, and so much of it. And then I worried about the color, too. Thinkses I, mebby it is too young for me; too young for a woman who owns a bald-headed pardner and a grandchild, and who has but few teeth left in her head.
My conscience is a perfect old tyrent, and jest drives me round more’n half the time. I am willin’ to be drove by her as fur as I ort to be. But sometimes, I declare for’t, I get so tuckered out with her drivin’s, that I get fairly puzzled, and wonderin’ whether she knows herself all the time jest what she is about; whether she is certain that she is always a drivin’ me in the right road; and how fur I ort to be drove by her, and when, and where to; and whether I ort to let my intellect and common sense lay holt and help her drive. As I say, she run me considerable of a run on this head-dress. I had a awful time of it, and won’t deny it, and I was on the very pint several times of carryin’ it back. But when Kellup come right out, and gin such powerful hints about it; about extravagance, and wickedness, and vanity; and about married wimmen settin’ sinful patterns to them outside of meetin’-housen, and that it didn’t look likely, and et cetery, et cetery, and so forth.