“Independent, Samantha? I don’t know what you mean. I guess my sister would feel independent in my house; it would be her home jest as much as it is mine. Of course, I should’nt have to keep a girl if she lived with me, for I know she would want to take hold and help me; she would feel better for it; but she would have a good home and some one to take care of her.” But, thinkses I, take it with all that housework, and sinevetus and basler mengetus, and dime novels shadin’ the background, Alzina wuz wise to stay under her own hop vine and apple tree, but I didn’t say any more, for I felt it wuzn’t my place.
I hated to have Jack go, and he cried, but Tamer said he might come down agin before long, and she asked me if I wouldn’t go with her before long and visit with her cousin Celestine, Uncle Submit Smith’s girl, a widder with one child, who wuz home on a visit. And I told her I would if I possibly could.
CHAPTER XVII.
Josiah had to go to Jonesville that afternoon after necessaries, and I sot all alone in my cheerful kitchen almost lost in a train of pleasant thoughts, and some sort o’ pensive ones, and at the same time windin’ a skein of blue-and-white clouded yarn for Josiah’s socks, when I hearn a little rap at the side door and opened it, and see to my surprise Miss Greene Smythe’s black coachman, Pompey, who handed me a note from his mistress, sayin’ she wanted me to answer it, so I told him to come in and sot him a chair. He stood by it, twiddlin’ his cap round in his hands and hesitatin’, but on my tellin’ him agin to set, he sot. Sidled down into the chair, settin’ on the extreme edge of it.
And I took out my readin’ specks and opened the note; it wuz big and square, and had a curious-lookin’ seal on the back, with some strange figgers and a word or two on’t, but it didn’t seem to be spelt right; I couldn’t make out what it meant; it wuz sunthin’ like this, Astra Castra Numan luman.
But if she meant anything about castor oil or somebody by the name of Newman, anybody could see that there wuzn’t any spellin’ to it. But then, I sez to myself as I read it, though I pity such a speller, let me not be hauty because I have had advantages and spelt down the school repeatedly.
So I opened the letter. It wuz a invitation for me to attend a bazar for the benefit of the heathen at her boarding place. But, good land! it wuz two or three weeks off, and I wondered if she thought it would take all that time for me to do up my work and git ready. I thought she little knew my faculty in turnin’ off work if she did. But then I meditated mebby she thought I would have to fix over my black alpacky dress, or bind my flannel petticoat; anyway, I spozed it wuz all well enough.
I thought I would try to go if I could, and sot down to write her a note, and thought I would write it as near like hers as I could, spozin’ hers wuz in the height of fashion. But on runnin’ it over in my mind whether I could go or not, I remembered jest in the nick of time that wuz just about the time our old hen turkey would come off; it ort to come off the day before, but might hang fire. She wuz settin’ on nineteen eggs under the horse barn, and I wouldn’t run the chance of her streakin’ off to the swamp with all them young turkeys, party or no party, so, as I didn’t want her to git up no false hopes, I wrote: