But I told her I liked her looks as well ag’in as she wuz. “Why,” sez I, “How could she lift her torch above her head? And how could she ever enlighten the world, if she wuz so held down by her corsets and sleeves that she couldn’t wave her torch?”
She see in a minute that it couldn’t be done. She owned up that she couldn’t enlighten the world in that condition, but as fur as looks went, it would be perfectly beautiful.
But I don’t think so at all. But, as I say, Miss Flamm has a real hard time on’t, all bard down as she is, and takin’ all the care of that dog, day and night. She is jest devoted to it.
Why jest before we started a little lame girl with a shabby dress, but a face angel sweet, came to the side of the carriage to sell some water lilies. Her face looked patient, and wistful, and she jest held out her flowers silently, and stood with her bare feet on the wet ground and her pretty eyes lookin’ pitifully into our’n. She wanted to sell ’em awfully, I could see. And I should have bought the hull of ’em immegitly, my feelin’s was sech, but onfortionably I had left my port-money in my other pocket, and Josiah said he had left his (mebby he had). But Miss Flamm would have bought ’em in a minute, I knew, the child’s face looked so mournful and appealin’; she would have bought ’em, but she wuz so engrossed by the dog; she wuz a holdin’ him up in front of her a admirin’ and carressin’ of him, so’s she never ketched sight of the lame child.
No body, not the best natured creeter in the world, can see through a dog when it is held clost up to the eye, closer than anything else.
Wall, we drove down to what they called Vichy Spring and there on a pretty pond clost to the springhouse, we see a boat with a bycycle on it, and a boy a ridin’ it. The boat wuz rigged out to look like a swan with its wings a comin’ up each side of the boy. And down on the water, a sailin’ along closely and silently wuz another swan, a shadow swan, a follerin’ it right along. It wuz a fair seen.
And Josiah sez to me, “He should ride that boat before he left Saratoga; he said that wuz a undertakin’ that a man might be proud to accomplish.”
Sez I, “Josiah Allen, don’t you do anything of the kind.”
“I must, Samantha,” sez he. And then he got all animated about fixin’ up a boat like it at home. Sez he, “Don’t you think it would be splendid to have one on the canal jest beyond the orchard?” And sez he, “Mebby, bein’ on a farm, it would be more appropriate to have a big goose sculptured out on it; don’t you think so?”
Sez I, “Yes, it would be fur more appropriate, and a goose a ridin’ on it. But,” sez I, “you will never go into that undertakin’ with my consent, Josiah Allen.”