And at last a dretful conviction rousted up in me. It come the day we went the trip round the Islands. We enjoyed ourselves real well, until I discerned that huge figger settin’ in a corner with that one eye watchin’ our party as clost as a cat would watch a mouse. Can it be, sez I to myself, that that man has formed a attachment for me?
No, no, it cannot be, sez I to myself. And yet I knowed such things did occur in fashionable circles. Men with Mormon hearts hidden under Gentile exteriors wuz abroad in the land, and such things as I mistrusted blackened and mormonized the bosom of Mr. Pomper, did 97 happen anon and oftener. And I methought if so, what must I do? Must I tell my beloved companion? Or must I, as the poet sez, “Let concealment, like a worm in the rug, feed on my damaged cheek?”
But thoughts of the quick, ardent temper of my beloved companion bade me relinquish the thought of confidin’ in him. No, I dassent, for I knew that his weight wuz but small by the steelyards, and Mr. Pomper’s size wuz elephantine, with probably muscles accordin’. No, I felt I must rely on myself. But the feelin’s I felt nobody can tell. Thinks I, “It has come onto me jest what I have always read and scorfed at”; for I had always thought and said that no self-respectin’ female need be inviggled unless she had encouraged the inviggler, or had a hand in the invigglin’. But alas! with no fault of my own, onless it wuz my oncommon good looks,—and of course them I couldn’t help,—here I wuz the heroine of a one-eyed tragedy, for I felt that the smoulderin’ fire burnin’ in that solitary orb might bust forth at any time and engulf me and my pardner in a common doom.
But two things I felt I could do; I could put on a real lot of dignity, and could keep a eagle 98 watch onto my beloved pardner, and if I see any sign of Mr. Pompers attacktin’ him, or throwin’ him overboard, I felt the strength of three wimmen would be gin to me, and I could save him or perish myself in the attempt. In accordance with them plans, when Mr. Pomper approached us bringin’ us some easier chairs, I confronted him with a look that must have appauled his guilty mind, and when he sez to me:
“It is a pleasant day, mom.”
I looked several daggers at him and some simiters, and never said a word. And when a short time afterwards he asked me what time of day it wuz, pretendin’ his watch had stopped, I looked full and cold in his face for several minutes before I sez in icy axents, “I don’t know!” Every word fallin’ from my lips like ice-suckles from a ruff in a January thaw, and then I turned my back and went away from him.
Vain attempt! What wicked arts men do possess! He pretended to believe I wuz deef, and with that pretext he dasted to approach still nearer to me and kinder hollered out:
“What time of day is it?”
I see I must answer him, or make a still more sentimental and romantick seen, and I sez, with extreme frigidity and icy chill, “I don’t know anything about it.”