Agin she looked at her with a fur off look, some as if she wuz in Hindoostan or Egypt or somewhere and sez: “I have never been able to get such feelin’ into a picture as I have in this.”
And I sez, “Like as not,” and I added, “I know I have a real lovin’ feelin’ for little Mary.” And I smoothed back her hair with a tender hand and made of her. And then I bid her good-by and went upstairs, bein’ called there by Anna. And the stage hove in sight, and Tamer had to draw Celestine offen her work and git into her bunnet and shawl. The stage driver wuz real profane durin’ the siege of gittin’ her started, but he got the easel in, and big framed pictures and placks and panels, and she standin’ over him and warnin’ him to be careful and not injure ’em, and he got her little satchels and boxes in and she herself, and they wuz jest drivin’ off when Hamen’s wife come runnin’ down the steps and called out to her cousin:
“Celesteena, you have forgot little Mary!” And at that minute I come downstairs and ketched sight of her and little Jack out in the yard playin’. Celestine looked at her pictures and satchels and things and seemed to come to a realizin’ sense that she did miss sunthin’, so little Mary wuz called in and put in the stage jest as she wuz, though her dress wuz fur too thin for that cool day, and her face and hands wuzn’t what they should be to start off on a journey, and she hadn’t a mite of a wrap on, but the pictures and panels wuz protected by thick wrappers, and Celestine didn’t see anything wrong. Little Mary kissed her hand to me as they went out of the gate, and I threw a dozen to her, and hundreds of wishes for her future happiness, but I must say I felt dubersome about it, dretful dubersome.
Well, we got home that night in good season, I got a delicious supper, and, oh! how good it did seem to be in my own home agin. Everything looked good to me, even to the teakettle and broom. Oh, truly, indeed, hath the poet said and sung, “There is no place like home, there is no place like home.”
I found a lot of papers there Thomas J. had sent me, and I wuz glad enough I didn’t read ’em till I eat supper and done up my work. For I knew that no supper could I partook of had I seen the dretful news these papers contained. And I didn’t see that fatal article for quite a spell. The papers told about Miss Greene Smythe’s Charity Bazar, and the first one I opened had a very full description of the party, and over a column wuz devoted to her dress, it wuz described as very shinin’ and glitterin’, and her diamonds immense. It said this Charity Ball and Bazar wuz a great success, and her city might be proud of such a woman, her native land might be proud to own her as a child, and the Hottentot would rise up and call her blessed; it wuz a powerful editorial.
Another daily paper, which I took up next, said it wuz a vulgar affair; her dress wuz gaudy, her ornaments in poor taste, and it said that after the expenses of that bazar wuz paid not over one dollar and seventy-five cents would ever git to that heathen, and it wuz very doubtful if even that sum would ever reach him, owin’ to the cupidity and selfishness of the intermediate links, Hottentot and American.
And the paper went on to say that the Hottentot didn’t need clothin’, anyway, and it wuz doubtful if he would spend the money for that purpose even if it ever reached him, for he had imbibed from Americans a strong love for alcoholic stimulants, and it wuz supposed by the editor that he would spend the money raised by the bazar in gettin’ intoxicated on Boston whisky. It wuz a dretful discouragin’ article. And in that same paper, right along in the next column describin’ the affair Miss Greene Smythe had been lookin’ forward to with such pride, wuz the dretful tragedy put down, the thing that took the nip out of Miss Greene Smythe, and made a different woman of her, so they say.
I hate to tell it; I hate to like a dog, but I must; it is the truth and has got to be told. Poor little Angenora! poor little thing! The nurse gin her too much of that opiate either through carelessness or meanness or sunthin’; ’tennyrate, she gin her an overdose that very night of the party. It wuz spozed the nurse wanted to be free to flirt round and enjoy herself, and the child bein’ over-excited and couldn’t sleep she dosed her double and treble. ’Tennyrate, she gin her so much that the next mornin’ they found her pretty little body layin’ cold and still, the sweet, misused sperit gone clear out of it. Escaped! that’s the way my mind pictured it to myself as I thought it over with the paper dropped into my lap and the tears runnin’ down my face entirely onbeknown to me.
Escaped! away from these bleak skies into a safer, happier realm. The nurse run away when she discovered it, but wuz brung back by officers of the law. Miss Greene Smythe went into spazzum after spazzum, coniption fit after coniption fit, but recovered enough to testify aginst the girl and send her to prison. The next work she did wuz to dismiss the other girl and hire a good, middle-aged woman, widder of a Lutherean minister, to take care of Algernon.
Well, I don’t envy that widder not a mite. But no missionary to Africa nor India’s coral strand wuz ever needed more, and mebby she will disseminate some gospel and some common sense into the benighted jungles of Miss Greene Smythe’s mind. ’Tennyrate, I hearn, it come quite straight too—Nancy Yerden hearn it from her sister-in-law in Jonesville and she told me—that them Danglers didn’t dangle nigh so much, Miss Greene Smythe seemin’ to not want ’em to.