Aunt Polly Pixley wuz the only one who received the intelligence gladly. And she thought she would go too. She had been kinder run down and most bed rid for years. And she had a idee the water might help her. And I encouraged Aunt Polly in the idee, for she wuz well off. Yes, Mr. and Miss Pixley wuz very well off though they lived in a little mite of a dark, low, lonesome house, with some tall Pollard willows in front of the door in a row, and jest acrost the road from a grave-yard.
Her husband had been close and wuzn’t willin’ to have any other luxury or means of recreation in the house only a bass viol, that had been his father’s—he used to play on that for hours and hours. I thought that wuz one reason why Polly wuz so nervous. I said to Josiah that it would have killed me outright to have that low grumblin’ a goin’ on from day to day, and to look at them tall lonesome willows and grave stuns.
But, howsumever, Polly’s husband had died durin’ the summer, and Polly parted with the bass viol the day after the funeral. She got out some now, and wuz quite wrought up with the idee of goin’ to Saratoga.
But Sister Minkley; sister in the church and sister-in-law by reason of Wbitefield, sez to me, that she should think I would think twice before I danced and waltzed round waltzes.
And I sez, “I haint thought of doin’ it, I haint thought of dancin’ round or square or any other shape.”
Sez she, “You have got to, if you go to Saratoga.”
Sez I, “Not while life remains in this frame.”
And old Miss Bobbet came up that minute—it wuz in the store that we were a talkin’—and sez she, “It seems to me, Josiah Allen’s wife, that you are too old to wear low-necked dresses and short sleeves.”
“And I should think you’d take cold a goin’ bareheaded,” sez Miss Luman Spink who wuz with her.
Sez I, lookin’ at ’em coldly, “Are you lunys or has softness begun on your brains?”