Sez I, “I know better!”
Sez he, “It duz.”
Sez I, “Somebody has been a foolin’ you, Josiah Allen! There ain’t no sense in it. Do you s’pose folks would call a dress full, when there wuzn’t more’n half a waist and sleeves to it. I’d try to use a little judgment, Josiah Allen! “
But he contended that he wuz in the right on’t. And he took up his best vest that lay on the bed, and sot down, and took out his jack knife and went a rippin’ open one of the shoulders, and sez I, “What are you doin’, Josiah Allen?”
“Why, you can do as you are a mind to, Samantha Allen,” sez he. “But I shall go fashionable, I shall go in full dress.”
Sez I, “Josiah Allen do you look me in the face and say you are a goin’ in a low neck vest, and everything, to that party to-night?”
“Yes, mom, I be. I am bound to be fashionable.” And he went to rollin’ up his shirt sleeves and turnin’ in the neck of his shirt, in a manner that wuz perfectly immodest.
I turned my head away instinctively, for I felt that my cheek wuz a gettin’ as red as blood, partly through delicacy and partly through righteous anger. Sez I, “Josiah Allen, be you a calculatin’ to go there right out in public before men and wimmen, a showin’ your bare bosom to a crowd? Where is your modesty, Josiah Allen? Where is your decency?”
Sez he firmly, “I keep ’em where all the rest do, who go in full dress.”
I sot right down in a chair and sez I, “Wall there is one thing certain; if you go in that condition, you will go alone. Why,” sez I, “to home, if Tirzah Ann, your own daughter, had ketched you in that perdickerment, a rubbin’ on linement or anything, you would have jumped and covered yourself up, quicker’n a flash, and likeways me, before Thomas Jefferson. And now you lay out to go in that way before young girls, and old ones, and men and wimmen, and want me to foller on after your example. What in the world are you a thinkin’ on, Josiah Allen?”