And I says to him sort o’ mechanically (for my mind was almost completely full of alpacka and waist patterns—I had concluded late the night before to take the overskirt):
“What has come over you, Josiah Allen? I couldn’t never use to get you out nights at all.”
He didn’t explain, nor nothin’, but says agin, in that same sort of a curious way, but firm:
“You make the tea last through the day, Samantha, and to-night I’ll hitch up and go.”
And then he beset me to have a chicken pie for dinner, and I, bein’ in such a hurry with my sewin’, didn’t feel like makin’ the effort, and he told me I must make it, for he had had a revelation that I should.
Says I, “a revelation from who?”
And he says, “From the Lord.”
And I says, “I guess not.”
But he stuck to it that he had. And I finally told him, “that if it was from the Lord he would probable get it, and if it wuzn’t, if it wuz as I thought, a revelation from his stomach and appetite, he most probable wouldn’t get it.” And I kep’ on with my sewin’. I laid out to get a good, wholesome dinner, and did. But I couldn’t fuss to make that pie, in my hurry. His revelation didn’t amount to much. But it was curious his talkin’ so—awful curious.
I got to thinkin’ it all over agin as I sot there a-knittin’, and I felt strange. But little, little did I think what was goin’ on under my rockin’-chair, unbeknown to me.