“Twice 4 is 8, and no orts to carry; 4 times 2 is 8, and 8 and 8 is 16. Sixteen dollars a week. Why, Samantha,” says he, “that will support us; there hain’t no need of our liftin’ our fingers agin, if we could only keep ’em right here with us always.”
“Who is goin’ to cook and wait on ’em?” says I almost coldly. Not real cold, but sort o’ coolish like. For I hain’t one when I tackle a cross to go carryin’ it along groanin’ and cryin’ out loud all the way. No! if I can’t carry it cheerfully, I’ll drop it. So, as I say, my tone wasn’t frigid, but sort o’ cool like. “Who’ll wait on ’em?”
“Get a girl! get two girls! Think of sixteen dollars a week. You can keep a variety of hired girls if you want to. Yes,” says he, with a blissful expression and joyous axent, “besides the sweet rest and comfort we are a goin’ to take with ’em, we can have everything else we want. Thank Heaven we have now got a compeatency.”
“Wall,” says I in the same tones, or about the same,—coolish, but not frigid,—“time will tell.”
EARLY BIRDS.
EARLY BIRDS..
Wall, they come on a Monday mornin’, on the six o’clock train. Josiah had to meet ’em to the depot, and he was so afraid he should miss ’em, and somebody else would undermine him, and get ’em as boarders, that he was up about three o’clock, and went out and milked by candle-light, so’s to be sure and be there in season. And I had to get up and get his breakfast before daylight, feelin’ like a fool, too, for he kep’ me awake all night a’most, walkin’ round the house, and fallin’ over chairs and things,—sort o’ gropin’ round,—lightin’ matches to look at the clock to see what time it was. And if he said to me once, he said 30 times durin’ that night: “It would be jest my luck to have somebody get in ahead of me to the cars, and undermind me at the last minute, and get ’em away from me.”
Says I, in dry tones (not so dry as I had used, but dryish): “I guess there won’t be no danger, Josiah.”
But the very last thing I heard him say, in fearful and fractious tones, as he got into that democrat, was: “It would be jest like old Mandagool to undermind me.”