“I hain’t called you a camel. I only meant you was hefty, and camels was hefty, and it would take a simon or two to lift you round, either on you.”
“Wall,” says I, in frigid tones, “what I want to know is, are you a goin’ to shet that door?”
“Yes, I be, jest as quick as I change my clothes. I don’t want to fodder in these new briches.”
I rose with dignity,—or as much dignity as I could lay holt of, half bent, tryin’ to keep five or six quarts of strawberries from spillin’ all over the floor,—and went and shet the door myself, which I might have known enough to done in the first place, and saved time and breath. For shettin’ up doors is a accomplishment that Josiah Allen never will master. I have tutored him up on lots of things since we was married, but in this branch of education he has been too much for me. Experiments have been vain; I have about gin up.
In the course of ten or fifteen minutes, Josiah come out of the bedroom lookin’ as pleasant and peaceful as you please, with his hands in his pantaloons pockets, seemin’ly searchin’ their remotest depths, and says he in a off-hand, careless way:
“I’ll be hanged if there hain’t a letter for you, Samantha.”
“How many weeks have you carried it ’round, Josiah Allen?” says I. “It would scare me if you should give me a letter before you had carried it round in your pockets a month or so.”
“Oh! I guess I only got this two or three days ago. I meant to handed it to you the first thing when I got home. But I hain’t had on these old breeches sence that day I went to mill.”
“Three weeks ago to-day,” says I, in almost frosty axents, as I opened my letter.
“Wall,” says Josiah cheerfully, as he hunted round in the bedroom for his old hat, “I knew it wuzn’t long, anyway.”