Wall, Josiah Allen would set and look at her by the hour—dretful admirin’. But good land! I didn’t care. I loved to look at her myself. And then too I had this feelin’ that his morals wuz sound. But after awhile, I could see, and couldn’t help seein’, that he wuz a tryin’ in his feeble way to flirt with her. And I told him kindly, but firmly, “that it wuz somethin’ that I hated to see a goin’ on.”
But he says, “Well, dumb it all, Samantha, if anybody goes to a fashionable place, they ort to try to be fashionable. ’Taint nothin’ I want to do, and you ort to know it.”
And I says in pityin’ axents but firm, “If you don’t want to, Josiah, I wouldn’t, fashion or no fashion.”
But I see I couldn’t convince him, and there happened to be a skercity of men jest then—and he kep’ it up, and it kep’ me on the key veav, as Maggie says, when she is on the tenter hooks of suspense.
I felt bad to see it go on, not that I wuz jealous, no, my foretop lay smooth from day to day, not a jealous hair in it, not one—but I felt sorry for my companion. I see that while the endurin’ of it wuz hard and tejus for him (for truly he was not a addep at the business; it come tuff, feerful tuff on him), the endin’ wuz sure to be harder. And I tried to convince him, from a sense of duty, that she wuz makin’ fun of him—he had told me lots of the pretty things she had said to him—and out of principle I told him that she didn’t mean one word of ’em. But I couldn’t convince him, and as is the way of pardners, after I had sot the reasen and the sense before him, and he wouldn’t hear to me, why then I had to set down and bear it. Such is some of the trials of pardners?
Wall, it kep’ agoin’ on, and a goin’ on, and I kep’ a hatin’ to see it, for if anybody has got to flirt, which I am far from approvin’ of, but if I have got to see it a goin’ on, I would fain see it well done, and Josiah’s efforts to flirt wuz like an effort of our old mair to play a tune on the melodian, no grace in it, no system, nor comfort to him, nor me.
I s’pose the girl got some fun out of it; I hope she did, for if she didn’t it wuz a wearisome job all round.
Wall, a week or so rolled on, and it wuz still in progress. And one day an old friend of ours, Miss Ezra Balch, from the east part of Jonesville, come to see me. She come to Saratoga for the rheumatiz, and wuz gettin’ well fast, and Ezra was gettin’ entirely cured of biles, for which he had come, carbunkles.
Wall, she invited Josiah and me to take a ride with ’em, and we both accepted of it, and at the appointed time I wuz ready to the minute, down on the piazza, with my brown cotton gloves on, and my mantilly hung gracefully over my arm. But at the last minute, Josiah Allen said “he couldn’t go.”