In the case of my pardner it wuz fashion, nothing but the butterfly of fashion he wuz after, to act in a high-toned, fashionable manner, like other fashionable men. And jest see the end on’t why he had brought sufferin’ of the deepest dye onto his companion, and what, what hed he brought onto himself—onto his feet?
Oh! the agony of them several moments while them thoughts was a rackin’ at me. The moments swelled out into a half hour, it must have been a long half hour, before I see far ahead, for the eyes of love is keen - a form a settin’ on the grass by the wayside, that I recognized as the form of my pardner. As we drew nearer we all recognized the figure—but Josiah Allen didn’t seem to notice us. His boots was off, and his stockin’s, and even in that first look I could see the agony that was a rendin’ them toes almost to burstin’. Oh, how sorry I felt for them toes! He was a restin’ in a most dejected and melancholy manner on his hand, as if it wuz more than sufferin’ that ailed him—he looked a sufferer from remorse, and regret, and also had the air of one whom mortification has stricken.
He never seemed to sense a thing that wuz passin’ by him, till the driver pulled up his horses clost by him, and then he looked up and see us. And far be it from me to describe the way he looked in his lowly place on the grass. There wuz a good stun by him on which he might have sot, but no, he seemed to feel too mean to get up onto that stun; grass, lowly, unassumin’ grass, wuz what seemed to suit him best, and on it he sot with one of his feet stretched out in front of him.
Oh! the pitifulness of that look he gin us, oh! the meakinness of it. And even, when his eye fell on the Deacon a settin’ by my side, oh! the wild gleam of hatred, and sullen anger that glowed within his orb, and revenge! He looked at the Deacon, and then at his boots, and I see the wild thought wuz a enterin’ his sole, to throw that boot at him. But I says out of that buggy the very first thing the words I have so oft spoke to him in hours of danger:
“Joisiah, be calm!”
His eye fell onto the peaceful grass agin, and he says: “Who hain’t a bein’ calm? I should say I wuz calm enough, if that is what you want.”
But, oh, the sullenness of that love.
Says Ezra, good man—he see right through it all in a minute, and so did Druzilla and the Deacon—says Ezra, “Get up on the seat with the driver, Josiah Allen, and drive back with us.”
“No,” says Josiah, “I have no occasion, I am a settin’ here,” (looking round in perfect agony) “I am a settin’ here to admire the scenery.”
Then I leaned over the side of the buggy, and says I, “Josiah Allen, do you get in and ride, it will kill you to walk back; put on your boots if you can, and ride, seein’ Ezra is so perlite as to ask you.”