“I am afraid I have done hurt as it is, but Heaven knows I didn’t mean to.”
I threw the corset another handful of dough, and told him, in a encouragin’ tone, that “I guessed he hadn’t done much harm.”
“Why,” says he, “don’t you s’pose I could see for myself what I was a doin’? She was a gettin’ head over heels in love with me. And,” says he, frownin’ and knittin’ up his eyebrows:
“What good will it do to have another married woman a droopin’ round after me?”
KELLUP’S CONUNDRUM.
Says I, mechanically, as I put some fresh water on the corset’s dish:
“I thought you wanted to see Josiah about the stun-bolt, you said you needed it.”
“Yes, I need the stun-bolt, but I need a easy conscience more. I had ruther lug the stuns in my arms, and crack my back, and bruise my stomach, than crack the commandments and strain my principles. I see from her actions that I have got to leave at once, or no knowin’ what the consequences will be to her. I am afraid she will suffer now, suffer intensely. But what can a man do?” says he, frownin’ heavily. “They have got to go around some, and do errants. And if wimmen lay traps for ’em on every side, and make fools of themselves, what is a man to do? But I don’t want to do harm, Heaven knows I don’t.”
And he started for the gate almost on the run. And I was jest a goin’ in when Alzina Ann come out to the back door herself, and happenin’ to see the corset, she said “she should rather have it for a pet, and it was far handsomer and more valuable than any mockin’-bird, or canary, or parrot she ever laid eyes on.” And so she kep’ on in jest that way. And one mornin’ when she had been goin’ on dretfully that way, I took Josiah out one side and told him “I couldn’t bear to hear her go on so, and I believed there was sunthin’ wrong about it.”