That very afternoon we was all invited to take tea with she that was Cassandra Allen, Miss Nathan Spooner, that now is. And we all went, Alzina Ann, Josiah, and me.
Cassandra didn’t use to be likely. She had a misfortune when she was a girl. It is six years old now. But all of a sudden she took a turn, and went to behavin’. She learnt the dress-maker’s trade, experienced religion, and jined the Methodist Church. And folks begun to make of her. I didn’t use to associate with her at all, Josiah didn’t want me to, though she is his 2nd cousin on his father’s side. But jist as quick as she went to behavin’, we went to makin’ of her. And the more she behaved, the more we made; till we make as much of her now as we do of any of the relation on my side, or on hisen. And last fall she was married to Nathan Spooner. She got acquainted with him about two years ago.
Nathan is a likely feller, all that ails him is he is bashful, too bashful for any sort of comfort. But Cassandra is proud-spirited, and holds him up, and I tell Cassandra “I dare say he’ll get over it by the time he gets to be a old man. I tell her “I shouldn’t wonder at all if by the time he got to be seventy or eighty, he would talk up quite well.” I try to make her feel well, and encourage her all I can.
NATHAN SPOONER.
But bein’ proud-spirited, it works her up awfully to have Nathan get over the fence, rather than meet a strange woman, and walk in the lot till he gets by her. And it mortified her dretfully, I s’pose, when she introduced him to our new minister and his wife, to have him instead of bowin’ to ’em, and speakin’, turn his back to ’em, and snicker.
NATHAN SNICKERS.
But he couldn’t help it, I told her he couldn’t. I was present at the time, and I could see, his mouth bein’ a little open, that his tongue was dry, and parched, and his eyes wild and sot in his head.
He has the worst of it, as I told Cassandra—it don’t hurt nobody else so bad as it does him. But I s’pose it has been almost the means of his death, time and agin—through his not dastin’ to call for anything to eat when he is away from home, and not dastin’ to eat it when it is on the table. And then again, sometimes, through his not dastin’ to stop eatin’ when he gets at it.