And though it didn’t come right out and sing ’em in plain words, yet it seemed to be a roarin’ it down the chimbley, and blowin’ it through the orchard and round the corners of the house, and whistlin’ it through the open buttery window—the song that other elevated and gay spirits indulge in, about bein’ fairly determined and sot to not go home till mornin’.
It blowed fearfully. But I was calm and peaceful, knowin’ the table-cloth was on, and Josiah would act first-rate. And then, when a tempest is a howlin’ and a actin’ out-doors, it seems as if I enjoy more than ever the safety and sweet repose and happiness of my own hearth-stun (which last is a poetical simely, our hearth not bein’ stun at all, but iron, with a nickel platin’ round it).
Wall, there I sot, feelin’ well and lookin’ well. I had combed my hair slick, and put on a clean gingham dress,—when Josiah Allen opened the door and walked in. He glanced at the table-cloth, and a calm, contented look settled upon his eye-brow, but he left the door open behind him as composed as if he had been born in a saw-mill; and says I:
“Josiah Allen, if there was a heavy fine to pay for shettin’ up doors, you wouldn’t never loose a cent of your property in that way.” And says I, clutchin’ my pan of strawberries with a firmer grip, for truly it was a movin’ and onstiddy, and my apron was a flutterin’ like a banner in the cold breeze: “If you don’t want me to blow away, Josiah Allen, shet up that door.”
“SHUT THAT DOOR.”
“Oh shaw! Samantha. You won’t blow away; you are too hefty. It would take a hurrycane and a simon, too, to tackle you, and lift you.”
“Simon who?” says I, in cold axents, caused partly by my frigid emotions and the cool blast, and partly by his darin’ to say any man could take me up and carry me away.
“Oh! the simons they have on the desert. We hearn Thomas J. read about ’em. They’ll blow camels away, and everything.”
Says I dreamily: “Who’d have thought twenty years ago, to have heard that man a courtin’ me, and callin’ me a zephire and a pink posy and a angel, that he’d ever live to see the day he’d call me a camel.”