He begun jest as I put my potatoes on to bile, I wuz goin’ to smash ’em with plenty of cream and butter; I hearn him till dinner wuz on the table, and I wuz turnin’ out the rich, fragrant coffee and addin’ the cream to it, and his praise on ’em wuz still flowin’ in a stiddy stream, and then I asked him, in one of his short pauses for breath, how Grout Nickelson’s rumatiz wuz.
He answered polite but brief, and resoomed the subject nearest and dearest. I then, with dizzy foretop and achin’ ear pans, tried to turn his mind onto politics and religion, no avail. I tried cotton cloth, carbide, lamb’s wool blankets, Panama Canal, literatoor, X rays, hens’ eggs, Standard Oil, the school mom, reciprocity, and the tariff; not a mite of change, all his idees swoshin’ up against them islands, and tryin’ to float off our minds there with hisen. I thought of what I’d hearn Thomas J. read about Tennyson’s character, who “didn’t want to die a listener,” and I sez in a firm voice, “I’ve had a letter from Cousin Faithful Smith. She’s comin’ here next spring to make a visit.”
Whitfield said he should love to see Cousin 10 Faith, but whilst she wuz here, we all ort to go to the Thousand Islands.
Sez Josiah firmly, “We ort to take her to Coney Island,” and he went on rehearsin’ Serenuses praises, and the education and the bliss one could git there. He rid his hobby nobly, but Whitfield, bein’ young and spry, could ride his hobby faster and furder, till finally Josiah got discouraged, and sot still a spell, and then scratched his head, and went out to the barn. And Whitfield seated himself with ease on his hobby, which pranced about us till, well as I love the children, I felt relieved to see ’em go, for my head felt as if the river wuz rushin’ through it. And after they left and we driv over to the post office, it seemed as if the democrat wuz a boat and the dusty road a broad, liquid stream, down which we wuz glidin’ and the neighin’ of the old mair (we had to leave her colt to home) wuz the snort of a steamer. My dreams that night wuz about the Saint Lawrence, kinder swoshy and floatin’ round.
Well, the cold winter passed away, as winters will, if you have patience to wait (or if you don’t either, to be exact and truthful). The shiverin’ earth begun to git a little warmer, 11 kinder shook herself and partly throwed off the white fur robe she’d wore all huddled round herself so long, and as the sun looked down closter and more smilin’ it throwed it clear off and begun to put on its new green spring suit. Them same smiles, only more warm and persuadin’ like, coaxed the sweet sap up into the bare maple tops in Josiah’s sugar bush and the surroundin’ world, till them same sunny smiles wuz packed away in depths of sugar loaves and golden syrup in our store room. Wild-flowers peeped out in sheltered places; pussy willows bent down and bowed low as they see their pretty faces in the onchained brook; birds sung amongst the pale green shadders of openin’ leaves; the west wind jined in the happy chorus. And lo! on lookin’ out of our winder before we knowed it, as it were, we see Spring had come!
And with the spring come my expected visitor, Faithful Smith. She is my own cousin on my own side, called by some a old maid. But she hain’t so very old, and she’s real good-lookin’—better than when she wuz a girl, I think, for life has been cuttin’ pure and sweet meanin’s into her face, some as they carve beauty into a cameo. She’s kinder pale and her sweet soul seems to look right out at you from her soft gray 12 eyes, and the lay of her hull face is such that you would think, if the fire of happiness could be built up under it (in her soul), it would light up into loveliness.
She wuz disappinted some years ago (or I d’no what you would call it) when she sent the man away herself. But she had a Bo when she wuz a girl by the name of Richard West. Dick West wuz the fullest of fun you ever see, though generous and good hearted; but he boasted on not believin’ anything, and Faithful’s father, bein’ a church member of the closest kind, and she brung up as you may say, right inside the tabernacle, with her Pa’s phylakracy hangin’ on the very horns of the altar, you may know what opposition Richard got from her Pa and her own conscience. Her conscience, as so many good girl’s consciences are, wuz a perfect tyrant, and drove her round—that, and her Pa. He wanted to be a good man, but wuz bigoted and couldn’t see no higher than the top of the steeple, and didn’t want to. And take these facts, with her deep true love for Richard, you may know she got tossted about more’n considerable.
Richard would make fun right in meetin’—make fun of their religious observances—and 13 finally, though he wuz good natured, and did all his pranks through light-hearted mischief and not malice, yet at last he did git mad at the old deacon, who wuz comin’ it dretful strong on him with his doctrines and exhortin’ him, tellin’ him he wuz a lost soul and had been from before his birth. Then Richard sassed him right back and told him he didn’t believe in his idee of the Deity.
The old deacon couldn’t stand such talk. He turned him outdoors, slammed the door in his face, and forbid Faith to speak to him again. She obeyed her Pa and her own conscience; but it seemed to take all the nip out of her life. You see, she loved this young man; and when anyone like Faith loves it hain’t for a week or a summer, but for life.