But he seemed sot. He said “it wuz more fashionable amongst married men and wimmen, than the more single ones,” he said “it wuz dretful fashionable amongst pardners.”
“Wall,” says I, “I shall have, nothin’ to do with it, and I advise you, if you know when you are well off, to let it entirely alone.”
“Of course,” says he, fiercely, “You needn’t have nothin’ to do with it. It is nothin’ you would want to foller up. And I would ruther see you sunk into the ground, or be sunk myself, than to see you goin’ into it. Why,” says he, savagely, “I would tear a man lim from lim, if I see him a tryin’ to flirt with you.” (Josiah Allen worships me.) “But,” says he, more placider like, “men have to do things sometimes, that they know is too hard for their pardners to do—men sometimes feel called upon to do things that their pardners don’t care about—that they haint strong enough to tackle. Wimmen are fragile creeters anyway.”
“Oh, the fallacy of them arguments—and the weakness of ’em.
But I didn’t say nothin’ only to reiterate my utterance, that “if he went into it, he would have to foller it up alone, that he musn’t expect any help from me.”
“Oh no!” says he. “Oh! certainly not.”
His tone wuz very genteel, but there seemed to be sumthin’ strange in it. And I looked at him pityin’ly over my specks. The hull idea on it wuz extremely distasteful to me, this talk about flirtin’, and etc., at our ages, and with our stations in the Jonesville meetin’ house, and with our grandchildren.
But I see from day to day that he wuz a hankerin’ after it, and I almost made up my mind that I should have to let him make a trial, knowin’ that experience wuz the best teacher, and knowin’ that his morals wuz sound, and he wuz devoted to me, and only went into the enterprize because he thought it wuz fashionable.
There wuz a young English girl a boardin’ to the same place we did. She dressed some like a young man, carried a cane, etc. But she wuz one of the upper 10, and wuz as pretty as a picture, and I see Josiah had kinder sot his eyes on her as bein’ a good one to try his experiment with. He thought she wuz beautiful. But good land! I didn’t care. I liked her myself. But I could see, though he couldn’t see it, that she wuz one of the girls who would flirt with the town pump, or the meetin’ house steeple, if she couldn’t get nobody else to flirt with. She wuz born so, but I suppose ontirely unbeknown to her when she wuz born.