I glanced my gray eye down the letter, and says I in agitated tones:
“Come out here, Josiah Allen, and let me look at you, and wither you! She that was Alzina Ann Allen is comin’ here a visatin’. She wrote me three weeks ahead, so’s to have me prepared. And here she is liable to come in on us any minute, now, and find us all unprepared.” Says I, “I wouldn’t have had it happen for a ten-cent bill to had one of the relation on your side come and ketch me in such a condition. There the curtains are all down in the spare room. Bill Danks fell and dragged ’em down onto the floor under him, and mussed ’em all up, and I washed ’em yesterday, and they hain’t ironed. And the carpet in the settin’-room up to mend, where he fell onto it with a lighted candle in his hand and sot it afire. And not a mite of fruit-cake in the house, and she a comin’ here to-day. I am mortified most to death, Josiah Allen. And if you had give me that letter, I should have hired help and got everything done. I should think your conscience would smart like a burn, if you have got a conscience, Josiah Allen.”
“Wall, less have a little sunthin’ to eat, Samantha, and I’ll help round.”
“Help! What’ll you do, Josiah Allen?”
“Oh! I’ll do the barn chores, and help all I can. I guess you’d better cook a little of that canned sammen I got to Jonesville.”
Says I coldly, “I believe, Josiah Allen, if you was on your way to the gallus, you’d make ’em stop and get vittles for you—meat vittles, if you could.”
I didn’t say nothin’ more, for, as the greatest poets have sung, “the least said, the soonest mended.” But I rose, and with outward calmness opened the can of salmon, and jest as I put that over the stove, with some sweet cream and butter, if you’ll believe it, that very minute she that was Alzina Ann Allen drove right up to the door, and come in. You could have knocked me down with a hen’s feather (as it were), my feelin’s was such; but I concealed ’em as well as I could, and advanced to the door, and says I:
“How do you do, Miss Rickerson?” She is married to Bildad Rickerson, old Dan Rickerson’s oldest boy.
ARRIVAL OF MISS RICKERSON.