And I believe that coffee wuz to the bottom of our trials that night.
Bein’ kinder fagged out, Martin had gone to his room early, and the rest had follered his example, and my pardner and I had also sought the seclusion of our quiet bedroom.
And I immegiately and to once begun my preperations for slumber.
I onfolded my nightgown and laid it over a chair and ondone my sheepshead night-cap, and mekanically went to sort of flutin’ the border between my fingers, as I sot there, and I begun to feel real drowsy.
But Josiah didn’t seem to be sleepy a mite. He had donned that dressin’-gown of hisen and tied the strings in a large bow-knot, that showed off the red tossels to the best advantage, and walked 2 and fro several times, and seemed to look and act real sentimental. He has sech spells—I guess all men do at times. And finally he leaned back in a big arm-chair and kinder hummed over some tunes—not sech tunes as I would approve of his singin’, but some songs—such as “Ben Bolt,” and “Lorena,” and “She’s all my Fancy painted Her.”
And finally he broke out quite loud a-singin’—
“‘I’ll chase the antelope over the plains,
The tiger’s cub I’ll’—
“What is it, Samantha, that he said he’d do to the tiger’s cub—‘with a chain’?”
Sez I, “Choke it, mebby—I presoom he’d be skairt enough to want to.”