“What wouldn’t I give if I owned some knives like them? What a proud and happy woman it would make me.”
BAD FOR NATHAN.
That rousted us all up agin, and never did I see—unless it was on a funeral occasion—a face look as Nathan’s face looked. Nobody could have blamed him a mite if he had gin up then, and not made another effort. But Cassandra bein’ so awful determined to do jest right, and start right in the married life, she winked to Nathan agin, as firm and decided a wink as I ever see wunk, and shet up her eyes, and Josiah and I done as she done, and shet up our’n.
And Nathan (feelin’ as if he must sink), got all ready to begin agin. He had jest got his mouth opened, when says Alzina Ann, in that rapturus way of her’n:
“Do tell me, Cassandra, how much did you give for these knives, and where did you get ’em?”
Then it was Cassandra’s turn to feel as if she must sink, for, bein’ so proud-spirited, it was like pullin’ out a sound tooth to tell Alzina Ann they was borrowed. But bein’ so sot in tryin’ to do right she would have up and told her. But I, feelin’ sorry for her, branched right off, and asked Nathan “if he layed out to vote republican or democrat.”
Cassandra sithed, and went to pourin’ out the tea. And Nathan, feelin’ so relieved, brightened up, and spoke up like a man, the first words he spoke out loud and plain, like a human bein’, that day—says he:
“If things turn out with me as I hope they will, I calc’late to vote for old Peter Cooper.”
I could see by the looks of Josiah’s mean that he was a gettin’ kinder sick of Alzina Ann, and (though I haint got a jealous hair in the hull of my back-hair and foretop) I didn’t care a mite if he wuz. But truly worse wuz to come.