“‘Serenus and Josiah are havin’ a gay time at Coney Island. I’ve jest had a card from Serenus,’ sez Miss Gowdey. You could have knocked me down with a pin feather.” (See page 214)
But all of a sudden I thought of what Serenus said about a woman twice my size dressed in gaudy red, forever takin’ after folks—What would Josiah do if she took after him? And no doubt she would, for looked at through the magnifying lens of Absence and Anxiety he looked passingly beautiful. As I thought of her I knowed what I would do. Sez I, “I will go and tear him away and bring him back to duty and his mournin’ pardner.”
But how could I go, wuz my next thought? How dast I venter there alone? I lacked both courage and a summer suit. But when did Samantha ever fail to lay holt of Duty’s apron strings when they dangled in front of her? Better go clothed in a righteous purpose and a old parmetty than in the richest new alpacky and a craven sperit.
I knowed that if I had wanted a hobble skirt or a hayrem, or a hip cosset there wuz no time to git ’em. But Heaven knows I didn’t want ’em, treasurin’ as I did the power to walk and breathe. Suffice it to say the next mornin’ the risin’ sun gilded my brown straw bunnet and umbrell as I descended from the car at the Grand Central.
Havin’ walked round and round, and through and through that immense depo, huffin’ it from 217 as fur as from our house to Jonesville, gittin’ lost time and agin, and bein’ found and sot right by onlookers and bystanders, in the fullness of time I emerged out on’t with a deep sithe of relief.
Believin’ as I do that the great beneficent Power that fills the ether about us, will bring us the help our sperit desires if we ask for it, it didn’t surprise me that almost the first man I met after I left the press and turmoil of the throng, wuz Deacon Gansy, who moved from Jonesville and is now runnin’ a provision store in New York.