And then, oh how the sun did scald down onto me, and the wind took the smoke so into my face that there wasn’t hardly a dry eye in my head. And then a perfect swarm of yellow wasps lit down onto our vittles as quick as we laid ’em down, so you couldn’t touch a thing without runnin’ a chance to be stung. Oh, the agony of that time! the distress of that pleasure exertion! But I kep’ to work, and when we had got dinner most ready, I went back to call Josiah again. Old Miss Bobbet said she would go with me, for she thought she see a wild turnip in the woods there, and her Shakespeare had a awful cold, and she would try to dig one to give him. So we started up the hill again. He set in the same position, all huddled up, with his leg under him, as uncomfortable a lookin’ creeter as I ever see. But when we both stood in front of him, he pretended to look careless and happy, and smiled that sick smile.
Says I, “Come, Josiah Allen, dinner is ready.”
“Oh! I hain’t hungry,” says he. “The table will probable be full. I had jest as lieves wait.”
“Table full!” says I. “You know jest as well as I do that we are eatin’ on the ground. Do you come and eat your dinner this minute.”
“Yes, do come,” says Miss Bobbet, “we can’t get along without you.”
“Oh!” says he, with that ghastly smile, a pretendin’ to joke, “I have got plenty to eat here—I can eat muskeeters.”
The air was black with ’em, I couldn’t deny it.
“The muskeeters will eat you, more likely,” says I. “Look at your face and hands; they are all covered with ’em.”
“Yes, they have eat considerable of a dinner out of me, but I don’t begrech ’em. I hain’t small enough, nor mean enough, I hope, to begrech ’em one good meal.”
Miss Bobbet started off in search of her wild turnip, and after she had got out of sight Josiah whispered to me with a savage look, and a tone sharp as a sharp axe: