He went to Bobbets’ one day in the fall of the year,—it was a year ago this present fall. Cassandra was a sewin’ for Miss Bobbet. They had jest had some new corn ground, and they had a new corn puddin’ and milk for dinner.
Nathan had been to dinner jest before he went in there. His mother had had a boiled dinner, and mince pie, and etcetery—he had eat a awful dinner, and was so full he felt fairly uncomfortable. But Miss Bobbet urged him to set down and eat, and wouldn’t take no refusal. She thought he was refusin’ because he was bashful, and she urged him out of his way, telling him he must eat, and he, not dastin’ to refuse any longer, thought he would set down and eat a few mouthfuls, if he could, though it seemed to him as if he couldn’t get down another mouthful.
PUDDING AND MILK
PUDDING AND MILK.
But when he stopped, Cassandra, thinkin’ it was bashfulness that made him stop, and thinkin’ a good deal of him then—and wantin him to eat all the puddin’ he wanted, she told him she shouldn’t think he showed good manners at all, if he didn’t eat as much as she did, anyway. So he dassent do anything else then, only jest eat as long as they wanted him to, and he did. Miss Bobbet would press him to have his bowl filled up again with milk, and Cassandra would urge him to have a little more puddin’, and he not dastin’ to stop, after she had said what she had, I spose he eat pretty nigh three quarts. It almost killed him. He vomited all the way home, and was laid up bed-sick for more’n two weeks.
And he has destroyed his clothes dretfully. Now hats,—I spose it took pretty nigh all he could earn to keep himself in hats. When he would go to any new place, or evenin’ meetings or anything, he would muss ’em so, rub ’em, and everything—why, he couldn’t keep no nap on a hat at all, not for any length of time—he would rub ’em so, and poke at ’em[’em], and jab ’em, and wring ’em when he was feelin’ the worst. Why, he got holt of Josiah’s hat, thinkin’ it was hisen, one night at a church social; they appointed Nathan to some office, and he wrung that hat till there wasn’t no shape of a hat to it. When Josiah put it on to go home, it was a sight to behold. Anybody would have thought that it was the fashion in the Allen family to wear hats for night-caps, and this had been the family hat to sleep in for years. Josiah was for makin’ him pay for the wear and tear of it. But I wouldn’t hear a word to it. I told him breakin’ bruised reeds, or smokin’ flax, would be tender-hearted business compared to makin’ anybody pay for such sufferin’s as Nathan Spooner had suffered that night. Says I, “if he wrung one mite of comfort out o’ that hat, for pity sake don’t begrech it to him.”
THE FAMILY NIGHT-CAP.
Why, I have been so sorry for that feller that I didn’t know what to do. Now when he was a courtin’ Cassandra (and how he ever got up spunk enough to court a mouse, is a mystery to me), Cassandra used to sew for me, and he would come there evenin’s to see her, and set the hull evenin’ long and not say nothin’, but jest look at her, and twirl his thumbs one over the other. And I told Josiah “I felt bad for him, and it seemed as if his thumbs must give out after a while, and it looked fairly solemn to me, to see ’em a goin’ so, for evenin’ after evenin’, and week after week, without any change.”